NYC Flushes $3.5M Down the Toilet: 4 Years Later, Park Bathroom Still in the Pipes

New York, New York ... where they'll spend millions to build toilets for a park and it will take years to accomplish it.

So-called cheap and easy-to-build $3.5M toilets for NYC park are 4 years behind schedule - and counting https://t.co/4jBzxJKHjf pic.twitter.com/QLH3W5Dy0I
— New York Post (@nypost) March 18, 2026

This bathroom is totally backed up.
An unassuming public comfort station that was billed as a “less expensive” and quicker-to-install option is still dangling in limbo — four years after the city approved the project.
The modular, $3.5 million restroom has been trapped in the procurement stage, leaving Upper Manhattan residents near Fort Washington Park in the lurch.
“This bathroom has been in purgatory with design changes and legal reviews,” Merritt Birnbaum, president and CEO of the Riverside Park Conservancy, told The City.

The city Parks Department still estimates that the project will cost the same $3.5 million it was initially pitched as, but construction industry costs have climbed as much as 15% in the past six years, according to the report, published Monday.

It's a good time to remember that the Empire State Building was built in 390 days using machinery and technological processes from nearly a 100 years ago. https://t.co/RbEae19phJ
— Reza Chowdhury (@RezaC1) March 19, 2026

Back in the days when Americans were proud to accomplish something.

I get comments all the time for being against public projects in NYC, as if I never want the city to improve, but this is the real reason something as basic as fixing an existing public park bathroom, with no difficult plumbing work involved runs into the millions due to graft https://t.co/455t3PO8t8
— Sean Fitzgerald (Actual Justice Warrior) (@IamSean90) March 18, 2026

NYC Flushes $3.5M Down the Toilet: 4 Years Later, Park Bathroom Still in the Pipes

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