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The mayor’s $4 million modular restroom plan promises faster, cheaper installations. But dozens of existing park bathrooms remain shuttered and many more are in a disgusting state of disrepair.
A boys bathroom in Tompkins Square Park was shuttered to the public, March 2, 2026. Credit: Lilly Sabella/THE CITY
Just days after taking office, Mayor Zohran Mamdani moved to tackle one of New York City’s most chronic quality-of-life complaints: the lack of public bathrooms.
Standing at 12th Avenue and St. Clair Place in West Harlem, he announced a new $4 million commitment to expand restroom access, directing the New York City Economic Development Corporation to begin soliciting bids within his first 100 days for modular, high-quality public toilets.
The plan, he said, would deliver bathrooms faster and cheaper than traditional city construction projects.
“Everyone knows the feeling of needing a bathroom and not being able to find one,” Mamdani said at the press conference, joined by City Council Speaker Julie Menin. “With this new commitment to public toilets, we’re ensuring New Yorkers can travel through our city with a little less anxiety.”
But even as the administration pushes to build new bathrooms in busy neighborhoods and high-need areas, dozens of existing public restrooms in city parks remain out of service.
All told, there are nearly 1,000 city operated public restrooms across the five boroughs, roughly 70% of them in parks. The Parks Department says about 90% are operational.
But that leaves roughly 50 Parks Department bathrooms currently closed for repairs or renovations, some of which have dragged on for years, according to city budget records. Some have been in the design phase for months, and others have taken years to get going, according to the agency’s online tracker.
Manhattan Councilmember Gale Brewer said the mayor’s proposed bathroom expansion plan makes sense, but warned that fixing what already exists should be just as urgent.
“As the mayor is talking about spending money on new bathrooms, we do need to fix the ones that exist,” Brewer told THE CITY. “The Parks Department is where most of the public bathrooms are.”
Brewer noted that aside from the 50 that are officially closed for repairs, many open bathrooms are in rough condition. In Manhattan, she said, only a handful are widely praised including the well-maintained facility in Bryant Park, which has a full-time attendant, and another in Bella Abzug Park in Hell’s Kitchen.
By contrast, several bathrooms in Riverside Park — including ones near playgrounds and ballfields — are in “very bad shape,” she said, with renovation costs estimated between $5 million and $13 million.
The price tag for park bathroom construction has been climbing for years.
A 2019 investigation by THE CITY found that the typical Parks Department restroom — a no-frills rectangular structure with four walls, several toilets and a handful of sinks — cost taxpayers just under $3.6 million on average. That was nearly triple the $1.3 million average the agency spent in 2011.
The bathroom battle highlights a broader budget debate.
On the campaign trail, Mamdani repeatedly vowed to boost funding for the city’s Parks Department.
The preliminary budget released last month keeps funding for the agency essentially flat, at roughly half the 1% of the total budget Mamdani had pledged.
A public bathroom was closed in a Howard Beach park, March 2, 2026.
Park advocates are urging the mayor to follow through with his campaign promise and add funding for the city’s green spaces — and some of their busted bathrooms.
The final budget must be approved by the City Council by the start of the fiscal year on July 1.
Brewer and some of her colleagues have long advocated for more resources for city bathrooms.
A December 2025 report from the New York City Council Oversight and Investigations Division — launched by Brewer’s office and titled Good To Go? — says the bathroom problem doesn’t just entail spots that are closed for repairs.
Council investigators inspected 172 restroom sites across all five boroughs and found that more than one in 10 surveyed restrooms — all located in parks — were closed during posted operating hours. Nearly one in nine park restrooms were closed when they were supposed to be open.
The report also found that more than two in five restrooms surveyed were missing at least one basic necessity such as soap, toilet paper, a garbage can or a way to dry hands. More than one in seven restroom stalls lacked a functioning lock. And more than a quarter of open restrooms did not have a diaper changing table.
“These closures represent a lack of reliability for members of the public,” the report concluded, warning that uncertainty around whether bathrooms are open can contribute to a broader perception of restroom scarcity citywide.
‘Screaming About Bathrooms Forever’
At Riverside Park, the situation is particularly stark, according to Merritt Birnbaum, president and CEO of the Riverside Park Conservancy.
“I’ve been screaming about bathrooms forever,” Birnbaum told THE CITY.
Riverside Park has 14 restrooms in total — 13 open to the public and one mobile restroom that the conservancy purchased, operates and staffs itself near the pickleball courts. That unit, she noted, is seasonal and currently closed for the winter.
Of the 13 public restrooms at Riverside maintained by the Parks Department, five are currently closed.
“That’s five out of 13,” Birnbaum said. “They’re closed either because they don’t have heat, because water mains broke in the area and haven’t been fixed, or because of electricity and crumbling infrastructure issues.”
In some cases, she said, water is not being restored because broken lines serve only park facilities, and the department lacks sufficient plumbers to prioritize the repairs. “This is going on several weeks of no one being able to fix water issues in our park,” she said.
Even among the bathrooms that remain open, most haven’t seen major interior upgrades in decades.
“Many of them haven’t been fixed or upgraded inside for 70 to 80 years,” Birnbaum said. “They are falling apart and disgusting.”
Birnbaum also pointed to the city’s slow-moving procurement system as another obstacle.
In July 2021, then-Councilmember Mark Levine secured $1.8 million in discretionary funding for a modular restroom near Discovery Playground in Fort Washington Park, she said. “Everyone was very excited.”
Five years later, the bathroom has yet to arrive.
“It’s still in procurement,” Birnbaum said. “We’re nowhere near construction. The system is so broken that it cannot, five years later, deliver what was considered to be an easy bathroom.”
As for the mayor’s new bathroom plan, the administration says the 20 to 30 modular units — similar to models rolled out in Los Angeles and Portland — could be installed within months, dramatically accelerating a city process that often drags on for years.
A new self-cleaning, fully accessible public bathroom is slated to open later this year at the West Harlem site where Mamdani spoke, with the New York City Department of Transportation overseeing installation.
The new initiative is aimed largely at plazas and commercial corridors beyond the parks system, where access can be even scarcer.
It’s not the first time a mayor is pushing for additional bathrooms.
In 2006, the Bloomberg administration announced a 20-year franchise agreement with Cemusa, later bought by JC Decaux, to put in 20 automatic public toilets, 3,500 bus stop shelters and at least 330 newsstands in New York City.
But only five of the toilets have been installed and the city has struggled to find suitable new spots. For years, the others remained mothballed in a Queens warehouse, but city officials declined to say where they are currently located.
Just seven of the so-called Automatic Public Toilets, or APTs, have been installed citywide, according to the city’s Department of Transportation. Two have been added since 2022 — in Williamsburg and Red Hook — with another planned for West Harlem later this year.
The sun sets over Riverside Park in Manhattan, March 2, 2026.
No Park Bathroom a Headache for Parents
Diego Rivera, 35, said the seasonal bathroom closure creates predictable headaches, especially with his young son.
“It’s open for a couple of months, and then they take a really long break during the winter,” he told THE CITY, referring to a bathroom at 105th St. by Riverside Park.
During colder months, foot traffic thins out, he said. But that doesn’t eliminate the need.
“With a kid, more than anything, they can go anytime,” he said. “They don’t hold it like we can. So it kind of can happen anytime. So it’s good to have that possibility of just going somewhere.”
Without it, families improvise.
“At least there’s a couple of trees and there’s not that many people,” Rivera said with a shrug. “He can kind of get away with it.”
Even when bathrooms are technically open, he added, they’re not always usable.
“Sometimes it’s vandalized, and it’s not clean, not sanitized at all,” he said. “Open them, but keep them up to a standard. Otherwise, is it even better to do it outside?”
Rivera said access to basics like bathrooms and water fountains shouldn’t be controversial. “It’s something that we all do,” he said. “No matter who you are, where you’re from.”
With additional reporting from Lilly Sabella.
