West End residents call for public restroom to be moved

Posted

No Long Beach local hopes for bad weather during the summer season, unless, perhaps, you live on Virginia Avenue.

Residents who live on the dead end street in the West End attended the Sept. 6 City Council meeting to make local officials aware of the traffic, partying and alleged drug activity on their street during summer weekends, which they say is a result of a nearby public restroom on the beach.

A few days before the meeting, as Tropical Storm Hermine threatened the area, some living on the block embraced the storm.

“We were happy the weather was bad this weekend,” Virginia Avenue resident Howard Levy said at the meeting. “Nobody was here, and we got to enjoy the beach…and it wasn’t packed with people that don’t belong on our block that are coming from Queens, Brooklyn, [New York City.] The idea is to drive those people to the boardwalk; that’s where they should be going.”

The city offers 10 public restrooms along its beaches and boardwalk, seven of which, including the one on Virginia Avenue, are Americans with Disabilities Act accessible. The bathrooms are available when the beach is open — from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekends from May 28 to June 19 and daily from June 25 to Sept. 5.

About six residents, who were cheered by a large group of neighbors after they finished speaking, specifically complained of the influx of cars on summer weekend mornings — beginning as early as 7:30 a.m. — which some said puts their young children playing outside in danger, and prevents them from leaving without losing a parking spot in front of their homes.

Some also claimed they had witnessed drugs being sold on the street on numerous occasions. Long Beach Police Commissioner Michael Tangney said at the meeting that police are aware of potential drug activity at that location and are “on top of it,” though he added he is depending on help from the community.

“We do encourage residents to assist us in these issues because the corner of Virginia Avenue and Oceanview [Street] is not conducive to us setting up any kind of observation post without being observed by the bad people as well as the good,” Tangney said at the meeting. “We recommend that [residents] keep a log by their window any time they see activity, they write down license plates, and then confidentially give it to us.”

Bill McCluskey said he has endured a view of the tractor-trailer-sized bathroom from his oceanfront home, which he bought in 2007, each summer since Hurricane Sandy. City officials, however, told the Herald that the temporary restrooms at Virginia Avenue have been placed there for decades.

Some said that the issue has been brought to the city’s attention before.

“I appreciate the fact that we’re all taking notes right now, I really do, respectfully, but this is a call to action, something has to be done,” one resident said. “The stink alone, the health issues, the traffic, the drugs, the partying at night, it’s all due to the bathrooms. There’s no doubt about that.”

City Council President Len Torres thanked the residents for bringing the issue to the council’s attention and said the city would look into the issues raised.

“At the end of each summer, we discuss how the season went,” City Manager Jack Schnirman told the Herald, “and we contemplate what we can do to continually improve quality of life for Long Beach residents.”

Some residents suggested rotating where the temporary bathrooms reside each summer to split the burden among locals. But Levy — who has been a part-time Long Beach resident since 1994 and sold his apartment in New York City a year ago to permanently move onto Virginia — said that no residential neighborhood should have “smelly” bathrooms so close by.

“We deserve a quality of life also,” Levy said, “and we’re not getting the quality of life that we signed up for living in Long Beach.”