Nothing But Words

Check out the price tag – $408, 692 – that’s for one men’s room and one women’s room View at Picasa Check out the price tag – $408, 692 – that’s for one men’s room and one women’s room22-Dec-2009 20:19, SONY DSC-W55, 2.8, 6.3mm, 0.025 sec, ISO 200

The sign pictured here went up last month at 69th St Station. Check out the price tag: $408,692 to remodel the men’s room and the women’s room. My nice large house in a good neighborhood isn’t worth that kind of money. The station’s men’s room is a modest size – two toilets, two urinals, two sinks. Presumably the women’s room is similar, so we’re not talking about large facilities. And the sign says “refurbishing and renewal of existing public restrooms,” which doesn’t make it sound like major demolition or expansion is involved.

Usually when you see a sign like this for a public project, its for something like a bridge, and most of us don’t have the kind of experience needed to readily understand all the expenses involved. But most homeowners can relate to the cost of remodeling a bathroom. So I’ve been trying to imagine where all that money is going. Trying to be generous and fair, here’s my best guess at what the cost should be:

1. Let’s start with the price of remodeling a non-luxury residential bathroom. About.com puts the average remodel price at $16,000 to $17,500. Let’s round that up to $20,000.
2. Double that for 2 bathrooms: $40,000.
3. These are public restrooms that require heavy duty fixtures. In the old men’s room, the sinks, toilets, and urinals were stainless steel. The toilets were designed without seats (as the designers assumed – probably correctly – that some jerk would just tear them off) and the mirrors were reflective metal instead of glass. The sinks are probably designed to handle drunken idiots dancing on the counters. There’s also two of every fixture in each bathroom (two sinks, etc., but minus the showers and tubs in a typical residential bathroom). So given the need for heavy duty fixtures and two of each kind, let’s double the cost again: $80,000.
4. Now let’s add in the premium for union labor and the cost of compliance with regulations such as the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act). That’s harder to guess at, but I think doubling the cost again is generous: $160,000.

So that doesn’t even get us halfway to the actual price being paid with public funds. What is the rest for?

UPDATE: The SEPTA Watch Blog has picked up this post, and has reached out to SEPTA for more information.

UPDATE 2: septawatch.com got an answer: it turns out the cost is for renovating 4 bathrooms, not just the 2 implied by the sign. So if you take my generous $160K ballpark estimate and double it again (for going from 2 to 4 bathrooms), that’s $320K. That’s still almost $100K shy of the actual $408K cost, but if you read the septawatch.com post, it sounds like they’re actually doing more than just “refurbishing.”