HIS, HERS, AND THEIR’S
Civic honcho demands gender-neutral bathroom in Fort Greene park
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
He wants to take the binary out
of going number one and number
two!
The Parks Department
must build a separate, gender
neutral bathroom as part
of a pricey makeover of Fort
Greene’s Commodore Barry
Park comfort station, even
though city law allows people
to use whichever loo they identify
with, according to a member
of Community Board 2’s
Parks and Recreation Committee.
“It doesn’t satisfy me that
they can use any bathroom
they feel closely aligned with
— that’s not the answer,” said
the committee’s vice chair Andrew
Lastowecky at the Monday
meeting. “I know certain
transgender people that don’t
feel comfortable with this ‘identify
with whoever you are.’”
Parks offi cials presented
the committee with a $3.1 million
renovation of the bathrooms
COURIER L 40 IFE, OCTOBER 25-31, 2019
at the Flushing Avenue
park, with plans showing a
complete gut renovation of the
interior, along with a new roof,
windows, masonry, and accessibility
upgrades.
The bathroom between the
park’s baseball fi eld and playground
has not been renovated
since the 1980s, and the city
plans to fi nish the new design
by spring 2020, paving the way
for the comfort station’s reopening
the following year, according
to Parks architect Julie
Fisher.
Lastowecky proposed cannibalizing
parts of the comfort
station’s mechanical room
to make way for the genderneutral
stall, but a rep for the
Parks Department said that
there simply wasn’t room for a
whole other stall, while referring
to Mayor de Blasio’s 2016
decree essentially allowing
New Yorkers to use whichever
city bathroom they preferred.
“We’re squeezing a lot into
this building and Commodore
Barry Park desperately needs
bathrooms,” said Jim Morris.
Lastowecky and his fellow
committee members previously
scolded green space
gurus for not doing more for
gender-non-conforming Brooklynites
when they presented
a renovation of a comfort station
in Cadman Plaza Park in
March.
The board’s assistant district
manager agreed that the
park was in dire need of additional
bathrooms, and said the
Parks Department should be
looking at ways to increase the
number of toilets to accommodate
special events at the Fort
Greene green space.
“You’re able to go into
whichever bathroom you want
to while we’re retaining the
maximum amount of bathrooms
— which I’m thinking,
four, really?” said Carol-Ann
Church. “When you have an
event, four isn’t going to be
The city must install a gender-neutral bathroom at Commodore Barry
Park’s comfort station, demands one civic honcho. Photo by Kevin Duggan
nearly enough.”
The committee passed a
purely advisory motion to approve
the design, but Lastowecky
noted that he didn’t
want to wait decades for another
renovation to get it right
on gender-neutral facilities.
“Since this will take another
20 years before it’s
touched again we’re not approaching
it all over again,
this is a newer project, so I’m a
little disappointed,” he said.