Part of an ongoing series.
Seal Beach staff expects the final design phase of the pier restroom renovation project to be complete in November, according to Assistant City Manager Patrick Gallegos.
Background
The project has been in the pipeline (no pun intended) since March, when the City Council and staff held a strategic planning workshop.
As the Sun reported, city officials planned to renovate the pier restrooms before moving on to the other pier related projects.
This isn’t a quick process.
According to the March 2021 staff presentation, the estimated cost of repairing the pier restrooms was put at $250,000.
At the time, City Manager Jill Ingram said staff was budgeting the project for Fiscal Year 2021-22. It is, in fact, part of the city’s current capital improvement project.
Questions and answers
Assistant City Manager Patrick Gallegos answered questions about the pier restrooms in a Sept. 20 email. His answers included an update on the design of the planned remodel of the pier restrooms.
Sun: Can you provide the number of citizen complaints about the pier restrooms within the last 30 days (as of Monday, Sept. 13).
Gallegos: “The City has not received any formal complaints within the last 30 days except for the complaints submitted by the Sun News.”
Sun: Please provide me with a list of dates and times of the scheduled inspections. In addition, please provide the list of unscheduled inspections.
Gallegos: “The Public Works Maintenance Services Supervisor inspects the pier restrooms once each morning with designated Public Works staff checking them at least two other times throughout the day Monday through Friday. Designated Public Works staff inspects the restrooms two times (daily) during the weekends, once in the morning and once around noon. In addition, the City’s janitorial company provides continuous on-site janitorial porter service 7 days a week for the beach restrooms from 7:00 AM through 9:00 PM.”
Sun: Is there reason to expect that an agreement to design the pier restroom renovation will come before the council any time soon?
Gallegos: Staff is currently working with the City’s on-call Architect to define the scope of work for the project’s preliminary design phase. Staff anticipates the project’s preliminary design phase to be completed by early November. At that point, staff will work with the Architect to amend the Project’s preliminary design “scope of work” to include the final design phase work, which includes development of the final design plans and project bid documents. The Project’s final design phase is anticipated to commence in early December.”
Visits
• Over the past weekend (Sept. 25 and Sept. 26), a male employee of the Sun visited the pier restrooms.
On Saturday, Sept. 25, a porter was seen leaving the men’s room just before the reporter entered the facility. (Under the city’s contract with Golden Touch Cleaning Services, Inc., the pier restrooms will be cleaned between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays, until May 15, 2022. After that, they will be cleaned seven days a week. The pier and First Street restrooms are just two of many facilities covered by the cleaning contract.)
On Saturday, Sept. 25, 2021, the largest stall was occupied and therefore not available for inspection.
No debris was in sight at that time. No graffiti was visible on the exterior or interior doors of the second and third stalls.
On Sunday, Sept. 25, all stalls were available for inspection. Again, everything looked clean.
The bolt to the door of the disabled access (largest) stall remains unchanged after several weeks: it was severely rusted, and lacking a knob to move the bolt. The reporter had to take the cap off a pen to push back the bolt in order to leave the stall. The bolt on the door of the second stall was also severely rusted. But a knob was on the bolt and moved easily to lock and unlock the door. The bolt on the door of the third stall (nearest the urinals) has been missing for a few weeks now. The door of that stall does close completely, so the bolt would be useless even if it were present.
• A female Sun employee visited the women’s restroom on Sunday, Sept. 26. She found that the restroom was clean. However, she did report significant graffiti on the inside door of the disabled stall in the women’s restroom. She also found red duct tape on the door of another stall. The words “Out of order” were Written on the tape.
