A quarter of a century battle for a bathroom

Every summer, current and past residents of Kingsbridge Heights gather for a “friends and family day” at Fort Four Park, one of the parks that make up Washington’s Walk near the Jerome Park Reservoir.

Attendees come from as far as South Carolina, Philadelphia and Connecticut. They catch up on their lives and all the changes that have taken place since they’ve last seen each other. One thing, however, has remained unchanged: For the past quarter of a century, Fort Four Park has had no restroom.

“People are here year after year asking for the same thing,” Liz Thompson, a deputy chief of a Kingsbridge Heights neighborhood association, said in quiet frustration.

A fire damaged park facilities nearly three decades ago, and a public restroom was torn down. No one in the neighborhood seemed to recall the exact year of the fire, but residents estimated it took place in 1989.
Ms. Thompson’s Kingsbridge Heights Neighborhood Improvement Association, which organizes the friends and family gatherings on the first Saturday in August, has been fighting since to a get a new restroom installed.
In one of its latest efforts, the group has recently started a petition, which it plans to send to the Parks Department and local politicians later this month. By early September, the group had collected nearly 300 signatures, Ms. Thompson said.

“A lot of people have been involved so long. They’ve gotten old and crippled. Some of them have passed away,” said Howard Jackson, a former member of the neighborhood association who has lived in the area for 23 years.

“We got promises… and it didn’t pan out,” he said. Back in the days of his activism with the neighborhood association, the group stayed in contact with then-Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión, Jr. throughout his tenure in office, Mr. Jackson said. The former borough president could not be immediately reached for comment.

Conflicting accounts

Ms. Thompson said that about 18 months ago, she went to a Community Board 8 meeting and handed a letter to a board member and a representative from the Parks Department. She could not recall the names of the people she gave the letter to.

“I see them all the time. I go to the meetings,” she said. She also spoke with a Parks Department employee during Fort Four’s annual clean-up day, Ms. Thompson said. She could not recall the date, but according to the neighborhood association’s Facebook page, the cleanup took place on Oct. 24, 2015.
Daniel Padernacht, the community board’s chairman, said the board recognized the neighborhood group’s appeal. The minutes of a Nov. 6, 2014 meeting of the board’s Park and Recreation Committee read that Ms. Thompson presented a letter from her association’s president, Al Chapman, asking for restoration of the restroom in Fort Four Park.

The Parks and Recreation Committee’s chairman, Bob Bender, “noted that this has been the number 1 capital budget priority of the committee for several years and noted that he finds the absence of a rest room in the Fort Four/Washington’s Walk park complex to be deplorable,” the minutes read.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Parks Department said the agency had never received a letter from the neighborhood association and had not been in contact with the group.

‘Lots of accidents’

Because the park has no bathrooms, businesses across Sedgwick Avenue from Fort Four Park complain about getting continual requests from park visitors to use their facilities.

“In the summer, it’s bad,” said Mike, a C-Town supermarket manager, who declined to give his last name. The season brings more people to the park. Store policy allows only customers to use its bathroom, but denying requests proves difficult when a small child wants to use the bathroom, he said.

“They have the barbecues on Saturday and Sunday and all they want to do is use our bathroom,” he said. “You have to let them use it, especially when it’s a four or five-year-old. What are you going to do?”

At nearby Peter’s Newsstand and Deli, Steven Yang, a manager, said: “I have to refuse because I have a lot of stuff on the way to the bathroom. If I send someone back there, someone has to keep an eye on them because there is a lot of merchandise and stuff like that so I cannot allow them.”

His parents, who own the store, have been receiving bathroom requests every day for the past 25 years, Mr. Yang said, and he has seen daily requests come in for the past three years. “I feel bad saying no,” he added.
For Gabriela Cavanas, a mother of children aged 8, 4 and 1, the absence of bathrooms has led to “lots of accidents” when she could not get her children to a restroom in time.

“In an emergency – I mean, they’re little kids – when they gotta go, they gotta go,” she said, as she sat on the park bench with her daughter next to her in a stroller. “[We go] behind a tree…or we have to run back home… They can’t hold it in anymore.”

Money shortages

Fort Four underwent extensive “rehabilitation” in 1988, according to the Parks Department’s website, but a bathroom ended up not being part of the work.
“The initial plan included constructing comfort stations at the site,” a spokesman said in emailed comments. “Unfortunately, at that time we found out that there wasn’t a sanitary connection and that rock excavation would be needed for the foundation. We did not, and still do not have sufficient funds to complete the necessary work.”

But since Fort Four Park is a “large site that is heavily used by community members and residents of the surrounding neighborhoods,” the Parks Department is “currently seeking funds to reconstruct the park and build a comfort station,” the spokesman said.

Councilman Fernando Cabrera said he has allocated $1.12 million this year for a restroom in Fort Four Park, out of a total of $1.8 million for District 14 parks. This year’s allocation to Fort Four is part of a large-scale multi-year project, he said in emailed comments.

“Safe, clean and attractive recreation facilities are important for children, families, seniors and overall quality of life in our community,” he said.
In the 2015 fiscal year, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. allocated $500,000 for building a restroom.
But the total estimated cost would reach $3.1 million, the Parks Department said in a recent email.

Mr. Padernacht, the community board chair, told The Press the issue “remains a budget priority for our board but we need additional funding to actually start the restroom.” During each financial year in 2008-2016, the board included support for Fort Four Park in its budget requests. The requests went to the Office of Management and Budget and to the Parks Department, which make the funding decisions, Mr. Padernacht said.

Mr. Cabrera’s chief of staff, Greg Faulkner, said the councilman’s office has been trying to get the bathroom built, since members of the Our Lady of Angels church complained about the problem more than a year ago.
“We were told people were using the church yard to relieve themselves, and we then went to the Parks Department and asked if there would be money available to place a comfort station,” Mr. Faulkner said.

Ms. Thompson said she could not understand why, a quarter of a century later, her group still had to fight for getting a restroom installed: “We are a low crime area... We have fantastic homes,” she said. “We pay our taxes.”