{"id":24480,"date":"2024-12-10T16:52:14","date_gmt":"2024-12-10T23:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-flanders-park-public-restrooms-open-in-dolores\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:54:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:54:11","slug":"new-flanders-park-public-restrooms-open-in-dolores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-flanders-park-public-restrooms-open-in-dolores\/","title":{"rendered":"New Flander\u2019s Park public restrooms open in Dolores"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The
The new Flander\u2019s Park toilets in Dolores light up at night. (Photo courtesy Dolores Mayor Chris Holkestad)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

On Nov. 26, new bathrooms officially opened in Flander\u2019s Park in Dolores.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s quite amazing how fast that bathroom went up,\u201d said Dolores Town Manager Leigh Reeves.<\/p>\n

The roughly $285,000 project took about eight weeks to finish.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The grant itself is from a program called Revitalizing Main Streets, which, among other things, \u201cstrengthens the connection of people to main streets and central economic hubs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard here to find a bathroom sometimes,\u201d said Reeves. \u201cIt\u2019s another step along the way to just welcoming people.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a Bustang stop near the new bathrooms, too, so that played a role in landing the grant, Reeves said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019ll 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,\u201d Reeves said.<\/p>\n

In addition to the toilets, there\u2019s a water dispenser so people can fill their bottles with \u201cclean, drinkable water.\u201d There\u2019s also ports behind it for food trucks to plug in so when there\u2019s big festivals, they can plug in and<\/em> get water, Reeves said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other thing it does is that when people come to town, they stop using the Outfitters bathroom and the Dolores Food Market. Now there\u2019s a public restroom, two stalls each, to go into. So that\u2019s nice,\u201d Reeves said.<\/p>\n

The toilets are open year round, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., though those hours will likely change in the warmer months.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s silly to think that a bathroom is that big of a deal, but it is,\u201d said Reeves. \u201cIt allows people the freedom to be in the park and not worry about where they\u2019re gonna go, can I get into that business, do I have to pay to go in there to go to the bathroom.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd part of Dolores\u2019s identity is that we\u2019re on the San Juan Skyway. We want people to stop in our town any way we can get \u2018em,\u201d said Jacob Carloni, a member of the Parks Advisory Committee in Dolores.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if it\u2019s a bathroom,\u201d Reeves said.<\/p>\n

\u201cCapturing those folks off the highway is huge for our economy, so any little bit helps,\u201d Carloni said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They\u2019re open year round for everyone to use<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-24480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24480"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78547,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24480\/revisions\/78547"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24480"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=24480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}