There's a two-stall prefabricated restroom sitting at the Fuller Avenue entrance to Runyon Canyon in Los Angeles. It was delivered by crane back in February. Stalls installed. Sinks installed. Sidewalks poured. Lighting wired. It has been six months. The door is locked, the fence is up, and nobody has flushed a single toilet.
Cost to taxpayers: nearly $1 million.
Construction began in January with an expected timeline of 15 weeks, which would have put completion somewhere around April or May. The prefab unit arrived ahead of schedule in February. Everything after that stopped making sense.
FOX 11 talked to people who actually use Runyon Canyon every day. "I've had some close calls," said a frequent visitor named Josh. "I had to improvise, but that's all I'll say. I don't want to incriminate myself." That's a man describing the biological consequences of a million-dollar government project that can't seem to find the "open" button.
Another regular visitor, Shirah Scott Astrof, was more direct: "They're about four months behind schedule, and I'm here every day and never see people working on it." Four months behind on a building that was already built and delivered. The structure exists. It's physically there. It has walls, plumbing, and a roof. The city just can't figure out how to unlock the door.
City officials have offered the vague promise that the restroom will open "sometime this summer." Summer in Los Angeles ends in September. So the target window for opening a prefabricated bathroom that arrived six months ago is... eventually. Maybe. If the paperwork cooperates.
This is the same city, in the same state, that wants to run the nation's housing policy, infrastructure spending, and climate investment. California's leadership class talks constantly about bold public projects and transformative government action. They spent nearly $1 million on a portable toilet at a trailhead and still haven't managed to open it.
The private sector builds entire restaurants in 15 weeks. Drive-throughs. Car washes. Functioning buildings where humans enter, conduct business, and leave. Los Angeles was given a prefab box with two stalls and a sink, and six months later the fencing is still up.
A million dollars, two stalls, and zero accountability. In Los Angeles, that's not a failure. That's a pilot program.