A year after the Friends of Charlottesville Downtown organization helped orchestrate the opening of a public bathroom inside York Place on the Downtown Mall, the group’s executive director says a verdict is in.

“It has been wildly popular. We’re seeing about 200 people a day use those restrooms,” said Greer Achenbach, who’d just taken the job for the new organization when the bathroom negotiations were underway last fall.

“This was an issue that we were looking into and were very, very concerned about,” Achenbach told Charlottesville Right Now.

Friends of Charlottesville Downtown board member Chuck Lewis, who owns York Place, leased two public bathrooms right off the York Place lobby to the city at a rate of $5,000 per month.

That figure initially raised some eyebrows, but Achenbach said the service provided by York Place is more than just a lease.

“I know that it’s not a moneymaking venture for York Place,” she said. “The money that they get from the city is very much used to compensate the staff that cleans it and to make sure that it’s up to par for the public.”
In its second year, Achenbach said Lewis intends to ungrade the facilities to ensure they meet the high traffic demands.
Among those people using the public restrooms are runners, who stop along their routes, and some of the unhoused population, many of whom have been camping about a block away in Market Street Park since the City temporarily lifted the park’s operating hours last month. (The park will return to normal operations on Oct. 21.)
Achenbach says the housing crisis in Charlottesville, and the number of people who are living on the street in the downtown area, is a reality of life and of doing business on the Downtown Mall. Friends of Charlottesville Downtown is engaging with the issue.
“As you know, it’s a very, very complicated issue with a lot of different opinions, but it is important to us,” she said. The group has met with City Manager Sam Sanders to discuss an immediate temporary solution and is also putting together a subcommittee of business owners downtown and some experts in the issue at UVA to brainstorm longer term solutions.
“We’re hoping for more housing and more wraparound services,” Achenbach said. “I mean solutions that will really help people get on their feet, get off the street, all of that.”