The new public restrooms on North Circle Drive in the Mile High Plaza were open to the public this Monday, Dec. 18, and the Crier has confirmed they are in working order.

The Americans with Disability Act accessible facilities are the end product of more than 20 years of wrangling, and efforts by former supervisors Jeff Stone and Chuck Washington. The project often seemed close to realization; a January 2011 Crier article reported a statement from Supervisor Jeff Stone’s chief of staff that the restrooms would be installed by that summer.

Present supervisor V. Manuel Perez’s office, in a press release, said, “This is a great development for a town like Idyllwild that has a long history of tourism and it will support all the local businesses and be helpful for the community as a whole … Thank you to Supervisor Washington for his work on this over many years. And I thank the county team and the community of Idyllwild-Pine Cove on our first year representing the community, with these new restrooms, roads paved, and major work on the policy front, and I look forward to working on new efforts in the year ahead.”

The press release also noted that the construction was funded by “$580,570 in federal American Rescue Plan Act funding allocated by Supervisor Washington and the Riverside County Board of Supervisors for tourism and economic recovery.” The release also thanks “Mr. Shane Stewart for his role in siting the facility. The county has entered into a 49-year ground lease with his local company at $1 per year to provide this facility to the public and in a central part of the community.”

Maintenance is being contracted to Patty Perez’ Idyllwild Professional Cleaning. This was one of the last details to be ironed out. Idyllwild Community Center (CC) President Stephanie Yost explained to the Crier that originally, the plan was for ICC to manage and clean the restrooms under contract. But that contract had the funding coming from County Service Area (CSA) 36 funds, funds that come from a $35 per parcel tax, set in the 1980s and never raised. CSA 36 funds are designated for recreation and streetlights and no longer cover these services, according to Yost, who balked at the arrangement and engaged in “several weeks of back and forth with various folks in county government.”

The county, in the end, found other sources of funding, perhaps encouraged by what Yost refers to as “outreach to Supervisor Perez’ office by many residents.”

Yost noted that in addition to providing the land, Shane and Ashley Stewart paid to have the utilities brought to the site, and that local surveyor Lee Arnson donated his services to the project. She concluded by noting that although she “put the project participants together and got everyone’s agreement in fall of 2020,” ICC now has no role in the restrooms, and that concerns about maintenance or anything else should be addressed to the county, or to Idyllwild Professional Cleaning Service.