Our Loo!

Have you heard of the Portland Loo? It's a public toilet designed to avoid all the usual problems of public toilets. They've been pretty successful here, enough so that Portland is starting to sell them to other cities. Recently, the city has decided to install one in the North Park Blocks, directly across from the school at which I work. We are very excited about this because we are hoping it ends the practice of people using the playground or our parking lot as their bathroom. And today the loo is being installed!

There was a lot of preliminary work setting things up, but after that is done the loo itself is dropped into position. Here it is on the truck.

Hovering

Moving into position.

Almost there:

And, crack blogger that I am, I forgot to take a final picture. But you will see it when I show you the pictures from the First Flush ceremony, which will happen next week. In the meantime, look at the awesome design for the door on the loo. Apparently, each Loo's door reflects the character of the area the Loo is located. The city asked the school children to create the design. We picked out a quote by Emerson and all the kids drew flowers. A selection of them were chosen and sent to the city and a woman came up with this fabulous design incorporating our flowers. We even got our own copy of the door to hang in our school, which is what you see here.

Do you want to read more about the Loo? Here's an article from the Atlantic: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/design/2012/01/why-portlands-public-toilets-succeeded-where-others-failed/1020/