The Comfort Station Nobody Wants
A comfort station that originally caused outcry when it was going to be built in front of the Oceana condominiums in Brighton Beach is now a cause for alarm just a quarter mile down the boardwalk. City Councilman Chaim Deutsch recently wrote a letter to the Parks Department, asking them to reconsider building the comfort station in front of a Jewish center, Shorefront Y, on Coney Island Avenue.
In his letter to the Parks Department, Deutsch raises the issues of financial responsibility for relocating the comfort station, and future storms sending debris from the bathrooms into the Shorefront Y — a Community Recovery Center that provided meals and supplies to thousands after Superstorm Sandy.
“During the past few years, the Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery has worked on a multi-million dollar recovery project, including the creation of Community Recovery Centers,” wrote Deutsch in the letter. “One of those designated centers is the Shorefront Y, the building located directly in the path of the comfort station if it is relocated.”
Deutsch expressed concern that the comfort station would compromise the safety and integrity of the government funded recovery center.
“Why put it in front of a place that wasn’t affected by floodwater,” asked Deutsch. “The building should be resilient to help the community if, god forbid, we get another storm. Why jeopardize that building?”
Condo residents fear of debris causing damage during a storm was also an argument used in the two-year battle to move the comfort station away from the posh condominiums, as well as anxiety that the comfort station would attract homeless people and send smells of urine and human waste into their living room windows.
“People pay this much money because they want some luxury,” Irina Nesterenko, 43, an Oceana Condo resident, told the Times while protesting the Oceana comfort station. “What kind of luxury will we have if we have this monster-sized bathroom?”
“I personally don’t want to see people washing themselves nude, washing their underwear,” Eileen Trotta, also a resident of the Oceana condos, told the Times.
These issues are also what worry Deutsch and the residents he wrote the letter on behalf of.
“They don’t want people hanging out and smoking drugs, but why put that in front of the Y where kids are playing during the day,” asked Deutsch. “It needs to be put in a place where it accommodates everyone. Common sense says this is not the place to put it.
A small crew of residents from around the neighborhood urged the Parks Department to produce similar studies for the already-completed comfort stations further down the boardwalk and citywide, or at least extend its conclusions to those structures, at a hearing held at the Shorefront Y in 2013.
“If it has been determined that these structures are unsafe or undesirable will these same standards be used for the other locations?” asked Brighton Beach resident Ida Sanoff during the hearing, noting that 35 of these elevated comfort stations have been installed citywide.
“If one is determined to be dangerous, if this is a design flaw, then it’s a design flaw in all of them,” Sanoff told Sheepshead Bites after the hearing.
The comfort station will be 20 feet high and look like an RVs on stilts. The city first planned to build it after the Riegelmann Boardwalk’s bathrooms were destroyed by Superstorm Sandy.
Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz led the campaign to stop the bathroom construction in front of the condos in 2013, and was happy to see it moved farther down the boardwalk.
“It’s the best location because it’s the busiest area, it’s the widest area … it shouldn’t be right in front of the residential buildings, in people’s livings room,” said Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz after the announcement of the project relocation.
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will split the bill, the cost of which will be determined when it is completed, according to the Parks Department.
“After reviewing the options, Parks has determined that, from a planning and design perspective, relocating the comfort station to a location that is in front of an institutional establishment as opposed to a residential facility is preferable,” said the Parks Department in a statement. “This location is also more centrally located to the boardwalk entrance at Coney Island Avenue.”