On Nov. 26, new bathrooms officially opened in Flander’s Park in Dolores.
“It’s quite amazing how fast that bathroom went up,” said Dolores Town Manager Leigh Reeves.
The roughly $285,000 project took about eight weeks to finish.
That short construction timeline was motivated by a Nov. 30 deadline, which was a stipulation of getting grant money from the Colorado Department of Transportation, which largely financed the project.
The grant itself is from a program called Revitalizing Main Streets, which, among other things, “strengthens the connection of people to main streets and central economic hubs.”
“It’s hard here to find a bathroom sometimes,” said Reeves. “It’s another step along the way to just welcoming people.”
There’s a Bustang stop near the new bathrooms, too, so that played a role in landing the grant, Reeves said.
“It’ll take a couple of years, but there will probably also be an actual bus stop there so people can have a place to sit in the shade as they wait,” Reeves said.
In addition to the toilets, there’s a water dispenser so people can fill their bottles with “clean, drinkable water.” There’s also ports behind it for food trucks to plug in so when there’s big festivals, they can plug in and get water, Reeves said.
“The other thing it does is that when people come to town, they stop using the Outfitters bathroom and the Dolores Food Market. Now there’s a public restroom, two stalls each, to go into. So that’s nice,” Reeves said.
The toilets are open year round, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., though those hours will likely change in the warmer months.
“It’s silly to think that a bathroom is that big of a deal, but it is,” said Reeves. “It allows people the freedom to be in the park and not worry about where they’re gonna go, can I get into that business, do I have to pay to go in there to go to the bathroom.”
“And part of Dolores’s identity is that we’re on the San Juan Skyway. We want people to stop in our town any way we can get ‘em,” said Jacob Carloni, a member of the Parks Advisory Committee in Dolores.
“Even if it’s a bathroom,” Reeves said.
“Capturing those folks off the highway is huge for our economy, so any little bit helps,” Carloni said.
