Friday, May 02, 2008
Restrooms ready for business
New bathrooms at City Market Building will be ready for two downtown festivals this weekend.
The latest from The Ticker blog
Restroom blight no longer bedevils the Roanoke City Market Building downtown.
The once grubby bathrooms now gleam.
They boast new thrones, new sinks and, where gender appropriate, new urinals. All operate automatically.
In addition, there is new tile, fresh paint and new stall partitions.
Nearby, a portion of what has been a dingy mezzanine dining area also has been spruced up.
The newly renovated restrooms should be available for public use to serve crowds teeming downtown Saturday for the annual Strawberry Festival and Virginia State Championship Chili Cook-off, according to Brian Brown, the city's economic development administrator.
The city has managed the city-owned building for the past three years.
"It was our goal to be done before the festivals," he said.
Brown said the restroom renovations "went very well for us," meeting deadlines and costing less than the $125,000 budgeted by city council.
One task remains to be completed.
Because the City Market is a historic district, the replacement windows had to be specially ordered to meet Architectural Review Board standards, Brown said, and should be installed in a few weeks.
City Manager Darlene Burcham toured the restrooms Thursday.
"It reminds me of restrooms that I've been in in large airports," she said, adding that the renovated bathrooms are designed to be "as vandal-proof as possible."
Danny Billings was the city's project manager for the work.
"This is a palace," he said during a tour of the men's room. "They've never had this stuff before, where you just wave your hand" to operate various restroom fixtures.
One section of the mezzanine sports a fresh look, too.
A new color scheme prevails -- olive green ceiling and beige walls. The stained carpet has been removed and the floor will be ground down to "buffed concrete," resembling the shiny concrete floors in many big box retailers, Brown said.
There are new, environmentally friendly light fixtures, too.
Work will move soon to other mezzanine sections.
Bids are being received for replacing the building's exterior doors and for work on the canopy of the circa-1922 building.
The city also has issued a request for proposals for much more ambitious renovations envisioned for the market building. The deadline for receipt of the proposals is June 2.
Staff writer Pete Dybdahl contributed to this report.
