Tourists Need More Toilets, Ventura Told

If the city wants to keep visitors happy, it needs to get serious about providing public toilets, city tourism officials say.

There are the public parks at both ends of the strip. But some say that they attract too many homeless people. There are retail shops. But sometimes merchants aren’t so keen on letting strangers into their inner sanctums.

So, what to do?

At a recent Downtown Community Council meeting, Kathy Janega-Dykes, executive director of the city’s tourist bureau, implored merchants to come up with a solution, saying her office had received a stream of complaints over the summer.

“We had irate--and I mean irate--people at our visitors center” on California Street, she told a crowd of local merchants. “You’re one of the lobbies that will fight for this.”

It’s almost the perfect sign of downtown Ventura’s growing pains, as city leaders attempt a metamorphosis from the strip of thrift stores and junk marts that the city once was to the quaint, pedestrian-friendly “wine-and-cheese” kind of spot that draws a healthy flow of tourist dollars.

But how does the city convince the merchants, some of whom have been here for decades, that the times are changing?

Bathrooms may be the start.

“It’s gotten to be critical in the community, when so many merchants won’t let anyone use the restroom,” said Loretta Merewether, a downtown property owner and founder of the Downtown Community Council.

Merewether is an activist for new--even if just temporary--public restrooms. “It’s just good business sense. You supply what your clientele needs.”

Merewether has ideas that she will take to city hall with her downtown task force. She has ideas from other cities’ leaders and even invited a Santa Cruz official to explain how his city solved the problem--merchants anted up for Port-a-Potties.

She thinks Ventura should build a public bathroom, but understands that it hasn’t been written into the capital improvement plan. She hopes she could get merchants to chip in, but notes that there is foot-dragging. At the very least, there should be signs pointing the way to the parks, she said.

The city is doing what it can, officials said.

“It would be nice,” allowed Ventura Public Works Manager Mark Watkins. But money to build a bathroom would come from the general fund, he added, and there is competition for that money. “Public bathrooms have to compete with seismic remodels.”

In the meantime, Watkins said, he has made it one janitor’s job to check the park bathrooms and shoo away undesirables. Maybe, he suggested, Ventura could do what Santa Barbara does--contract with restaurants for public use of their bathrooms.

The city is working to strike a deal with Eller Media to put up bus shelters around town. That might result in the city getting what transportation engineer Tom Mericle called “self-contained restroom units.”

Meanwhile, the problem persists.

April Golden, who five months ago opened a shop called Candles by the Sea, is among the new breed who figure you have to give a little to get a little. Golden has pretty much an open-privy policy.

“They get all upset if you don’t let them in,” she said. “The only public ones are close, but they’re kind of scary.”

That can be good business. She has rung up sales from browsers who used her loo. But people don’t like to ask, she points out. It’s too embarrassing.

That is certainly true at the Busy Bee restaurant whose owners have installed token-operated bathroom doors. On Thursday, a well-dressed man popped in the back door and tried to slip a quarter into the bathroom slot. When that didn’t work, he gave up and moved on--in search of a more discreet refuge.

Shopkeeper Johnny Trueblood, for 27 years the owner of Trueblood’s Comestibles--a dusty maze of dogeared Playboys and ceramic knickknacks--won’t let anyone use his bathroom, homeless or otherwise.

He is friends with characters like One-Eyed Mike. But his facilities get too trashed if he lets people in, he said. “I have seen ‘em a couple times out drinking a beer by the dumpster,” Trueblood explained. “And I just say, ‘Please, don’t go to the bathroom there. . . .’ I don’t like calling the cops on them, because they don’t really have anywhere to go.”

For Jo De Board, a lifelong Ventura resident who brought a friend from out of town for a downtown visit, it’s a lot of worry over something that shouldn’t be such a problem.

Eventually they will build a public restroom, she thinks, because you can’t stop growth. But, even now, it’s not so terrible.

So, what does she do? “Plan ahead.”