Ventura Tourism Officials Ask for More Public Toilets

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

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

“We had irate--and I mean irate--people at our visitors center,” she told local merchants.

The problem is a sign of downtown Ventura’s growing pains.

There are public parks with restrooms at both ends of the downtown strip. But they attract too many homeless people, some say. There are the shops. But some merchants won’t open their bathrooms to the public.

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

She thinks the city should build a public bathroom, but knows it hasn’t been written into the capital improvement plan. She hoped she could get merchants to chip in, but says there has been foot-dragging.

“It’s just good business sense,” she said. “You supply what your clientele needs.”

April Golden, who opened a shop called Candles by the Sea five months ago, pretty much has an open bathroom policy.

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