COMMENTARY: Scant relief - one can foul one’s pants while waiting for a public loo

How does Helsinki intend to build 31 toilets when it has never managed to complete even one?

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By Kimmo Oksanen
     
      In the near future, the City of Helsinki is to set up 31 new public toilets, the city announced proudly last week.
      I do not believe a word of it.
      A similar communique was released already a few years ago. "Musical toilets will replace..." or some other nonsense.
      They have not been installed.
     
Nothing appears to be more difficult in Helsinki than building public loos.
      This is strange, as in all other respects the city’s health officials are in a great hurry to come down hard on bacteria.
      The officials have managed to cause trouble to small-scale enterprises in the foodstuffs and catering branch, even killing some of them.
      But the public health people are pathologically incapable of building a toilet.
     
In the early 21st century, I once wanted to find relief in the Katajanokanpuisto Park.
      No services to this effect were available.
      "We are considering setting up one public restroom in this park, too", a city official replied to my urinary enquiry on the phone.
      However, he said, we will first have to investigate whether or not there would be any potential users for the toilet.
      As it happens, it was quite demonstrably needless to study the issue, as we were just speaking on the phone about the very same matter.
      Is the official possibly still considering the question - or why there has been no sign of a toilet going up, and one still has to cross one's legs and hope for the best?
     
A Guggenheim Museum will be built in Helsinki.
      I do not believe it.
      A new Central Library will be built in the Finnsh capital.
      I don't believe that one, either.
      A tunnel to carry vehicle traffic beneath the centre of the city will be built in Helsinki.
      That's another tall tale!
      What is the reason behind my all-embracing scepticism?
     
For a start, because the City also announced earlier that a building called the Armi Center was to be built in Helsinki’s Katajanokka.
      The building was to have served as a shop window for Finnish architecture, design, and building knowhow.
      The Armi Center was not built.
      Or because a design hotel was to be erected on a prominent site in Katajanokka, but the project was rejected.
      Or because the city planned to start looking for an outside entrepreneur who would lease Lampan Talo (”The Lampa House”) on the Market Square and set up a hotel in the premises in 2010.
      It is now 2011, and yes, you guessed it. It did not happen.
     
Moreover, it is very unlikely that the plan to cover the Olympia Terminal and adjacent terminal areas in the South Harbour would ever be carried out.
      Let alone a fountain in front of Finlandia Hall.
      Fortunately.
      Neither will many other planned projects, including floating homes on the Eläintarhanlahti Bay, design saunas along the Hernesaari shore, new trams, bus stops to be designed by the Finnish artist Stefan Lindfors, or any other mumbo-jumbo plans like the "brightening up" of Helsinki’s Empire-style city centre.
     
The only public toilet will be located in the disused railway cutting connecting the Töölönlahti Bay and the West Harbour, as the "bazaar passage" that was originally planned there to serve as a light traffic route is unlikely ever to materialise.
      But then again, the railway cutting already is an old toilet.
      I rest my case.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 24.3.2011


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Helsinki hopes to tempt cruise passengers to disembark on Hernesaari peninsula (18.3.2011)
  Helsinki could get its own Guggenheim (18.1.2011)
  BACKGROUND: Was the axeing of the Armi Center in Katajanokka a missed opportunity? (8.8.2006)
  Dozens of floating homes could be placed on Kaisaniemenlahti bay (17.5.2006)
  Alignment of city centre tunnel to be decided soon by City of Helsinki (18.10.2005)
  Mayor says Helsinki´s new Central Library is to be located in Töölönlahti Bay area (13.3.2008)
  Helsinki City Council rejects Katajanokka hotel project at heated meeting (8.4.2010)
  Head of City Planning wants to cover Helsinki´s downtown blocks (23.10.2007)
  Helsinki plans to brighten up city centre (20.9.2005)

See also:
  And so we say "Adieu" to the elegant French superloos (25.10.2005)

KIMMO OKSANEN / Helsingin Sanomat
kimmo.oksanen@hs.fi