San Francisco’s “Toiletgate” solved with Prefab

One of PRC’s biggest and most notable moments from 2024 was just over the mountain pass in the City by the Bay – San Francisco. Last March ’24, Noe Valley residents rejoiced with the installation of the long awaited, new single restroom. So much excitement, the neighborhood community had a full celebration in honor of the new addition. Check out this video of the installation posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, by the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department.

This park project experienced lengthy delays due to the initial proposed cost of $1.7 million for a single-user restroom. While urban areas and big cities are no strangers to rocket-high construction costs, even this seemed price tag felt a bit too steep for the local residents. So understandably some uproar began and San Francisco’s “Toiletgate” was born.

This caught the attention of national media and all of sudden, our President of Public Restroom Company, Chad, Kaufman, started getting phone calls from press outlets trying to better understand the cost of manufacturing restrooms. To be clear, there is certainly no “one size fits all” pricing structure when it comes to restrooms and buildings, as no project is alike due to factors such as materials used, location, and level of customization.

PRC saw this as an opportunity to show San Francisco and other urban areas that prefab buildings can offer potential cost savings and at times be a better solution than site construction for certain projects, especially smaller building structures like a public restroom.

So how did Public Restroom Company get involved in all of this?

A bit serendipitously, Public Restroom Company already had a prefabricated, single-user restroom ready-to-go that was previously being used for trade shows and we needed to find it a good home. The restroom design was a floor plan intended for urban environment and very similar to what the City of SF had planned to build, so it felt like a perfect match.

Modular Building Institute helped connect our team with fellow prefabricated building powerhouse, Volumetric Building Companies. And in just a few conversations between our President and VBC’s CEO, Vaughan Buckley, they knew they could partner together to help resolve City of San Francisco’s loo issue and highlight the efficiences of modular construction at the same time. So in the end, all site work and installation costs related to the project were 100% covered by Volumetric Building Companies and the building was 100% donated by Public Restroom Company.

Its the end, it was ‘quite a relief’ for everyone involved (no pun intended 🙂 ) and the Noe Valley Neighborhood’s Town Square project was finally complete.