RED HOOK — City Councilman Carlos Menchaca is pulling funding for a $2.4 million bathroom in Red Hook’s Louis Valentino Jr. Park after local residents complained the building was too big and expensive.
The money will remain earmarked for a Red Hook capital project, Menchaca announced in a Facebook post Monday evening, and the neighborhood will get to decide how the $2.4 million is spent.
"[T]he community will be engaged in assessing community needs, presenting project proposals, and helping to determine the final project," said Vladimir Martinez, director of communications and budget for Menchaca.
The local process will "look, feel, and work" in a manner similar to the Participatory Budgeting Program, through which residents of District 38 get to decide how to spend $2 million in taxpayer money, but will remain separate from it, Martinez said in an email.
The $2.4 million in funding for the bathroom, known as a “comfort station,” was primarily allocated by former Councilwoman Sara Gonzalez.
Menchaca, and Borough President Eric Adams each contributed $250,000 to the project when they took office earlier this year.
“When we stepped in, the assumption was that this idea was borne out of a community process,” Menchaca said.
But Red Hook residents complained that the 650-square-foot comfort station, which would have featured stalls for men and women and a wheelchair accessible ramp, was overly pricey and took away too much green space from the small park.
While the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation presented a redesigned version of the bathroom that park officials explained would have a smaller “feeling,” residents said the new plans did not fully address their issues of size and cost.
While the redesign won't be seeing the light, Menchaca stressed in his statement that the waterfront park needed a bathroom and that he was exploring alternative ideas from locals, including “public-private partnerships on sites near the park.”
“A diverse group of stakeholders – including small businesses, those that fish off of the pier, kayakers, and Red Hook public housing residents – have underscored the real need for bathrooms in this area,” he added.
At a recent meeting earlier, residents cheered a possible plan to have luxury developer Est4te Four build a public bathroom at its 202 Coffey St. building, which is adjacent to the park.
At the time, Menchaca said he was not involved in discussions with the developer.
