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The community had already told the city what they needed. A bathroom. The city ran them through an engagement process to refine a solution that was already insanely expensive and slow. That's the planning failure. The community had been clear since day one. But instead of presenting options (e.g. prefab and fast, or custom and slow, what do you prefer?) the city ran residents through an engagement process to refine a decision already made. No clear tradeoffs were even on the table. When the price became public, it exploded. Governor Newsom threatened to withhold the state funding and revoke the appropriation entirely if the city couldn't deliver a more efficient plan. Two companies then stepped in, to support the process and I assume to introduce their products and services. A public Restroom Company donated a modular unit, and Volumetric Building Companies donated the installation labor. the combined donation was about $425,000. Switching to prefab also eliminated $491,000 in design and regulatory costs. that’s close to half a million dollar! By April 2024, the bathroom was open. The city paid roughly $300,000, instead of its initial $1.7M estimation. This story maps almost perfectly onto what I think good planning requires: clear outcomes, honest tradeoffs, and an understanding of power. The city lost all three. "Build a bathroom" became buried under layers of process, each with its own gatekeepers. The city avoided the real question: what matters most to the people who use this park? Who just need a bathroom. When the governor and two private companies forced the issue, a different set of tradeoffs became acceptable overnight. A bathroom in a public park shouldn't require a Nevada toilet company to save the day. But when process replaces purpose, it does.
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