Friends of Transmitter Park Launches Campaign to Install Restrooms in Transmitter Park

Looking for a public restroom in New York City can really be a pain in the butt. While our North Brooklyn parks generally offer a place to pee, one much-loved space lacks a much-needed amenity — Transmitter Park doesn’t have a bathroom!

Friends of Transmitter Park, the volunteer group that helps maintain the park, has now launched a write-in campaign to encourage the city to establish a permanent, ADA-compliant restroom in the former WNYC Radio transmission building, which they also call on to be renovated.

“Day in and day out the park is a beacon of public open green space that limits the time visitors can spend in the park as it lacks bathrooms,” said Elissa Iberti, Chair, Friends of WNYC Transmitter Park, in a press release. “The completion of the park with a capital investment for an ADA-compliant bathroom would be the start of some significant infrastructure that is lacking despite the growth of the surrounding area and the park’s destination status.”

The group is encouraging locals to sign a letter directed to City Councilmember Lincoln Restler. And their timing couldn’t be better — last week, lawmakers in City Council introduced a bill mandating the city create thousands of additional publicly-accessible restrooms.

Anyone who has ever desperately pleaded with a bartender or barista to use their establishment’s facilities knows how desperate the search can get in New York City, but the cold hard data bares this out as well. According to a study from Urban Design Forum, there are only about 1,100 public restrooms for the over 8 million people who live here (not to mention the millions of tourists who pass through each year).

Here’s a handy list of easily accessible bathrooms, and remember, when all else fails, find the nearest hotel and walk very confidently through the lobby until you find something.