For decades, visitors to downtown Ellsworth have relied on local businesses or public buildings to use a bathroom.
But that finally might be about to change. By next summer, there could be a public bathroom near City Hall that is open 24 hours a day, including on weekends.
“It’s going to be built in late spring, so it is ready for the busy summer season,” Twila Fisher, the city’s economic development director, said Wednesday.
Downtown public bathrooms open during non-business hours are common in many communities throughout the state, but have been lacking in Hancock County’s largest municipality. The addition of the restroom is expected to be most useful on evenings and weekends, when the options in the city’s busy downtown become scant.
The city has public toilets at its parks, including the boat ramp and marina on Water Street, at Knowlton Park on State Street, and at Demeyer Field on Boggy Brook Road, but those are open only generally from dawn to dusk and are closed throughout the winter. When they are open, it takes at least 10 minutes to walk from Main Street to the closest one at Knowlton Park.
Public buildings such as City Hall, the Hancock County Courthouse and Ellsworth Public Library all are just a block off Main Street, but are not open in the evening or on weekends. With the exception of a handful of restaurants and bars, most downtown businesses also are closed in the evenings.
This summer, the city has placed a public portable toilet in the eastern corner of the City Hall parking lot, near the back entrance to Finn’s Pub, as a temporary option.
Fisher said that city staff has been given the initial go ahead to plan for construction of a public restroom somewhere in the parking lot area of City Hall Plaza. It likely will start out as a single, disability-accessible toilet but if the restroom gets ample use and good reviews, she said, it could be expanded to include a second private toilet.
Exactly where it may be built has not been decided, and likely will depend on where on the parking lot’s perimeter it is easy to make a new connection to the city’s water and sewer systems, Fisher said.
Part of the planning process will include determining how the toilet will be regularly maintained and cleaned, to make sure it doesn’t fall into disrepair or disuse, she said. The city will include Heart of Ellsworth, a downtown community business group that sometimes hosts evening events downtown, in drafting a plan for keeping the restroom in good working order.
“That’s a big piece of it,” Fisher said.
