Since summer, visitors to DeForest Park in North Long Beach have had just one option for relief when nature calls: a pair of porta potties.
The park’s longstanding restrooms near DeForest Avenue and 61st Street have been red-tagged since a fire — likely caused by an electrical failure — damaged their interior on June 13, according to Long Beach Fire Department Capt. Jake Heflin.
For months now, two portable toilets have served as a temporary solution, but neighbors say they’re getting frustrated.
The facilities have not been able to “withstand the onslaught” brought on by busy weekends at the 15-acre park’s softball diamonds, soccer field, playground and various sports courts, said nearby resident Benjamin Pohlmeier.
“There’s lots of spectators, there’s multiple teams, … and those two porta potties just don’t cut it,” Pohlmeier said. “Everybody then just goes into the woods.”
Sometimes visitors can use the restrooms in a nearby education center run by the Conservation Corps of Long Beach, but the building is often locked, and that leaves the next closest option for non-portable restrooms roughly 15 minutes away in Houghton Park.
Pohlmeier, who has lived in the DeForest neighborhood since 2018, has been asking city officials over the past few months when the restrooms will be replaced. But there’s no clear answer yet.
Staff with the city’s Public Works Department is still evaluating replacement options and determining if insurance will cover a portion of the construction cost, Public Works spokesperson Jocelin Padilla-Razo said in an email.
“Timeframes are not yet finalized” for demolition of the existing building, she said. The closest timeline she could provide was sometime in 2025 for the “design, permitting and procurement” of a replacement restroom.
Building new high-tech toilets is one of the replacement options on the table, according to 9th District Councilmember Joni Ricks-Oddie’s office.
DeForest Park will be one of the locations for the “Throne Bathrooms” pilot program, Anjelica Vargas, chief of staff for Ricks-Oddie, said in an email.
If implemented, the “smart restroom solution” would provide the city with data on restroom usage, satisfaction, cleanliness and perceptions of safety, according to the city’s Technology and Innovation Department.
Meanwhile, though, nature is still calling.
Dan Pressburg, president of the DeForest Park Neighborhood Association, said a handful of people have stopped into the group’s monthly meetings in recent months to ask to use the restroom.
Past repairs at the park have fallen to the neighborhood, according to Pressburg. When the DeForest Park clubhouse was in need of maintenance, he said, volunteers stepped up to patch the walls, rehang two doors and fix a broken window at the facility where the neighborhood association now holds its monthly meetings.
Unfortunately, he said, his group doesn’t have the access or resources to fix the restrooms. So they’re left to wait on the city.
“The process has been extremely slow and I would love to see it get better and faster,” Pressburg said. “All of us would.”