CLEVELAND — Mark Lammon never planned to spend so much time on free public restrooms.
But for five years, he’s been on a crusade: To make sure everyone has somewhere to go in Downtown Cleveland.
Now Cuyahoga County is preparing to install the city’s first Portland Loo – a durable, stainless-steel kiosk – at Payne Avenue and East 17th Street. The city of Cleveland is poised to put out three more, which could pop up at Perk Plaza and Canal Basin Park.
The project is happening thanks to a slew of partners and unceasing advocacy from Lammon, who started this journey in early 2020. He’s the executive director of the Campus District Inc., a nonprofit community development organization focused on the eastern edge of Downtown, where there’s a cluster of homeless shelters and social services buildings.
“There’s always been a debate about public restrooms,” he said. “The community would sometimes waffle, thinking of safety issues and who’s going to maintain it. And then COVID happens, and all public buildings closed. And Campus District and Ohio City kind of became the public restroom of the city.”
Neighborhood groups reacted by pursuing a grant to put out porta-potties – a short-term fix that lasted almost two years as the pandemic dragged on.
“And during that time, we had a study, basically, that showed there were no safety issues. We had no maintenance issues,” Lammon said. “And then we were looking at how much money the community was spending on porta-johns, and we decided ‘It’s time to go for public restrooms.’”
The Campus District used federal emergency pandemic relief money, which flowed through the Cleveland Foundation, to buy the Portland Loos. The single-stall structures are built to take a beating, with simple fixtures and an anti-graffiti coating.
The city of Portland, Oregon, came up with the concept almost 20 years ago to meet the needs of its growing homeless population. The loos were designed to discourage illegal drug use, prostitution and vandalism.
They’re partially open-air, with louvers at the top and bottom. The angled metal slats allow passersby and police officers to tell if someone’s inside. Otherwise, the curved door and wall panels are solid to ensure privacy.
Portland installed its first loo in 2008. Since then, the restrooms have appeared in more than 20 other cities, including Cincinnati and, recently, Columbus.
However, the local loos, which cost about $145,000 each, have been sitting in a Cuyahoga County maintenance garage for three years. Lammon said they’ve been tricky to place.
“Part of it is a real technical, engineering issue,” he said. “This is not a porta-john. It is plumbed into the city sewer. City water. City electricity. And finding the right site to serve everybody in our community was important.”
The loos have heated plumbing to prevent them from freezing in cold weather. A mechanical locker at the rear of each unit includes pressure-washing equipment so that it’s easy for maintenance workers to hose down the stalls a few times each day.
Cuyahoga County has agreed to install and maintain one of the loos. The restroom will be placed outside the entrance to the Virgil E. Brown Center, a social services building.
“Our hope is to move forward with it within the next two to three months here, to have it placed,” said Michael Dever, the county’s public works director. “We have to do the infrastructure work first, so that’s going to take a little bit of time. And we’re up against the clock with the weather. … Within the first quarter of 2025, it should be in place.”
Cleveland City Council is considering legislation to accept the other three loos as a donation from the Campus District. Council members discussed the plan during an Oct. 21 committee meeting but put off a vote, saying they wanted more information about installation costs and maintenance plans.
The city hopes to install one at Perk Plaza, at East 12th Street and Chester Avenue, and two at Canal Basin Park, a still-evolving green space on the east bank of the Flats. However those locations still need to be approved by the Cleveland City Planning Commission.
If approved, the Canal Basin Park loos won't be installed until the city moves forward with a broader redevelopment of the park. The city is talking to Downtown Cleveland Inc., which has cleaning ambassadors who patrol the center of the city, about handling the maintenance.
“This is a huge step in the way of service for our residents and visitors,” said Joyce Pan Huang, the city’s planning director. “And I personally believe that public spaces do need to provide this type of service, public restrooms, for the good of the order.”
As the parent of a young child, Huang said she and her family are constantly trying to find clean and safe restrooms. “Everybody needs to use a restroom,” she said.
Lammon and other neighborhood leaders once hoped to see more loos, potentially 10 to 15, installed across Northeast Ohio. The Campus District started with four because of its grant funding and the rising cost of stainless steel during the pandemic.
“We always envisioned this to be a broader network,” he said. “Once we get these in and we understand the maintenance, how they will service it, we would love to expand this – city and regionally – so that everyone can buy into one network and maybe they can all be serviced under one contract, so it’s a uniform system. But we’re not quite there yet.”
After so many years of effort, he can’t wait to see the first ones finally hit the streets.
“I’m ready to try a different project that doesn’t involve plumbing,” he said.
