Seattle to dump high-tech lavatories onto eBay

Seattle's self-cleaning restrooms will hit eBay Wednesday after the four-year, $5 million experiment went down the toilet.

The starting bid for each unit is $89,000.

The five high-tech public toilets, installed in 2004, were supposed to accommodate both tourists and transients in Pioneer Square, Capitol Hill, the central waterfront, Pike Place Market and the Chinatown International District. Instead, they became hide-outs for drug use and dealing, prostitution and illegal drinking.

The City Council pulled the plug on the free toilets this spring, ordering Seattle Public Utilities to cancel a 10-year contract and remove the facilities as soon as possible. The toilets — which worked on a timer and were cleaned by jets of water between each use — will be locked and fenced Aug. 1 and carted away by their new owners later in the month.

Bidders likely will be brokers or other cities.

So what is Seattle hoping to get for the fancy commodes?

"We honestly don't know," Andy Ryan, a spokesman for Seattle Public Utilities. "We've never sold automatic public toilets on eBay before."

The city just wants to dump the toilets, not "make a profit or to make a killing," said Fleets and Facilities Department spokesman Pat Miller.

The auction is being handled by Bidadoo Auctions, the company contracted to sell the city's surplus equipment. Bidding will be open for at least 10 days, Miller said.

Ryan said the city doesn't have a plan for providing public-restroom services after the automatic toilets are locked in August, and it probably won't have one for a few more months.

The city badly needs public restrooms and has "gone through lots of contortions in trying to figure it out," he said.

"Even when these restrooms were running, we were still getting reports of people urinating and defecating in public."

Noelene Clark: 206-464-2321 or nclark@seattletimes.com