Word count: 953 | Reading time: 4 min read
Pretzel Logic
There’s big bucks in public toilets — and the advertising that pays for them.
Let me be the first to warn you.
There’s going to be a lot of potty humor in this town in the coming months.
It’ll all start next week, when four public toilet manufacturers will display their wares outside City Hall, a perfect location for any discussion of human waste.
Anyone who has ever taken a deep breath on Market or South knows just how badly the city needs public poop sheds. And those poor souls whose windows are used for urinals know first-hand how much life can be improved if drunks, the homeless and theincontinent have evacuational options.
Groups like the South Street Neighborhood Association have been pushing the city to remedy the public pee-pee problem.
But there is a lot more at stake here than residents fighting for their right to potty.
Much more.
Because in return for installing public toilets, manufacturers will be awarded the right to installadvertising kiosks — those cylindrical, 20-foot-high beacons of commerce that line the streets of Paris and other civilized cities. The revenuefrom those kiosks — which has already led to a major loo-hah among manufacturers here in this country — will pay for the installation and maintenance of the toilets.
What’s the big deal?
There are many zeros involved in this debate.
Gannett Outdoor, one of those companies wishing to provide Philadelphians with alleyway alternatives, has the biggest stake in the outcome.
You know those bus kiosks with all the ads from movie studios and clothing manufacturers? Well, they bring in millions each year for Gannett Outdoor, which has a monopoly right now on what the bureaucrats call “sidewalk furniture.”
If Gannett Outdoor is unsuccessful in its proposal, then the sidewalk furniture monopoly is broken, and advertisers wishing to blanket Philadelphia with the latest shill for feminine hygiene products will have a whole new venue. Gannettoids — whosenewspapers already display the company’s knack for the effluvium business — are shuddering.
But shuddering is a rather passive response compared to what is going on in San Francisco, the only U.S. city with what the manufacturers call APTs (automatic public toilets).
There was a pitched two-year battle between Gannett Outdoor and a French firm called JCDecaux, which eventually won the right to dot the streets of San Francisco with APTs and accompanying advertising kiosks.
Doug Watts, Gannett Outdoor vice president, calls the West Coast Watercloset War “wild and wooly, and it continues to be wild and wooly.”
Watts says JCDecaux “sneaked in” to take the San Fran APT contract away from Gannett. Suzanne Davis, vice president for JCDecaux, says Gannett wielded “heavy lobbying pressure” on San Fran officials. “But our company wasselected because we have better product and maintenance,” she says.
There were charges and countercharges, and now the whole thing is likely to wind up before a judge.
Well, not just one judge.
Probably a couple of them.
Because Gannett isn’t the only opposition to JCDecaux’s toilets.
According to the San Francisco Examiner, that city’s “fledgling public toilet program is threatened with an indefinite shutdown because of a lawsuit targeting its accompanying advertising kiosks.”
The Union Square Association — San Fran’s equivalent of our Teal Fiefdom (aka The Center City District) — claims that the ad kiosks will “impede access to shops” according to the Examiner, which, being the self-styled “Monarchof Dailies” couldn’t be wrong. There was also concern that the construction of the ad kiosks could damage basements.
Another problem, according to the Examiner, is that while JCDecaux was quick to install the ad kiosks, it has been slow to install the toilets. The company, according to the Examiner, put up 85 of the planned 90 such units in one night,just before a possible legal injunction against them. However, it has only installed a small fraction of the 20 APTs required under the two-year pilot program.
Perhaps it was sour grapes, but Gannett’s Watts also warns that cities interested in APTs must beware of the accompanying drug and prostitution problems associated with public toilets constructed in this country.
Will any of these problems surface in Philadelphia?
City officials say while they are unaware of the West Coast Watercloset War, they are not about to let a similar shooting match break out in these parts.
Using “the wide latitude the city has to pick and choose the best proposal,” Marla Neeson, deputy procurement commissioner, says the city delayed opening the proposals.
The request for proposals listed Dec. 12 as the date proposals would be opened. However, city officials decided to delay that by two weeks.
“We wanted to ensure the best product,” says Neeson, who refused to elaborate on details of what extra information the city requested from vendors. Neeson added that the city can pick and choose between interested vendors or use acombination.
Watts, no stranger to toilet troubles, calls the Philadelphia process “confusing. We were not able to ascertain why there was a switch at the very last minute. The toilets go on display next week and we are not sure if we need to set updisplays. The whole thing is very murky.”
It’s not so murky to Philly officials.
Starting Jan. 10, Gannett Outdoor, JCDecaux, Revere National Corp. and Philly’s own Strategic Technologies Inc. — which has provided APTs all over Northern Italy — will showcase their toidies for all to see on the South Penn Square side of CityHall.
But if you have to go, hold it in until you get inside the Fortress of Freedom.
Because these toilets will only be full-scale mockups, with no plumbing, running water or ability to self-clean.
Then again, if you can’t hold it in, it wouldn’t be the first mess ever to foul City Hall.
