An international firm signed an agreement with Kyiv city authorities to supply state-of-the-art public toilets, but the deal has itself turned rancid
Aninternational outdoor advertising firm has signed an agreement with city authorities to supply Kyiv’s central streets with five state-of-the-art public toilets that would be free to both the city and citizens of Kyiv.
But the deal, intended to provide the city cost- and odor-free toilets, has itself turned rancid.
Despite an official contract between the company and the Kyiv city authorities and a press release announcing the project’s inception last May, the deal has been indefinitely postponed due to permit issues.
The plan was initiated by the advertising firm BigBoard Group, a Czech-based outdoor advertising company that has been working on the Ukrainian market for the past 14 years.
Just last September, the company entered a multi-million-dollar merger with French big board and street furniture giant JCDecaux, the number two advertising agency in the world, after Clear Channel Outdoor.
BigBoard signed a contract with Deputy Kyiv Mayor Denis Bass to install five ultra-modern public toilets on several central streets by May 26.
However, the company’s appeal to obtain an installation permit was unexpectedly denied by the Shevchenkivskiy district authorities. A representative at BigBoard said the city never explained the reasoning behind its decision.
In Kyiv, where public restroom facilities are sparse and often consist of Turkish toilets in various states of cleanliness and upkeep, BigBoard’s toilets would provide a much higher standard of sanitation than any public facilities currently available.
Using technology pioneered by JCDecaux, the pillar-shaped, high-tech street toilets are self-cleaning after each use and feature odor-eliminating ventilation and temperature maintenance systems, as well as automatic faucets, soap dispensers and hand dryers.
Also known as a sanisette, the self-cleaning toilets are widely recognized features on the streets of Paris, where the French government has commissioned around 420 of them, and can now be seen in many other large European cities.
The timing of BigBoard’s agreement coincided with other plans announced by city authorities to buy around 160 public toilets by 2011 to solve the city’s major lack of public restroom facilities.
The deputy head of the city’s Municipal Economy Department, Maksym Barinov, said that the city administration supports any initiative regarding the installment of module toilets in the city, including the one by BigBoard.
“It wasn’t originally a question of whom to prefer – everything was solved by tender contest,” he said.
But Konstantin Golowinski, public relations director for BigBoard Group, said his company had all the necessary permits to start work, except for the installation permit, the absence of which “effectively stops the whole project.”
Golowinski said that the toilets were to be a pilot, and not a commercial project meant to show the city the company’s capabilities and to start negotiations with the city to install a whole line of street furniture in Kyiv.
“We are not in the toilet business, but in outdoor advertising, and do not compete with toilet producer. For us this is, above all, the first step to promote street furniture ads in Ukraine,” he said.
He added that the company hasn’t abandoned its plans to install the toilets and its agreement with the city stays in force. He said the permit issue should be sorted out soon.
BigBoard agreed to pay for the toilets, each of which comes with a 110,000-euro price tag, not including the cost of installation. BigBoard would have recouped the cost through ad revenues generated by using the structures’ outer walls for sophisticated advertisements.
According to Golowinski, the company also promised to carry out the maintenance of the toilets for 15 years.
But at a press conference attended by representatives of BigBoard, the city said that it paid about Hr 120,000-125,000 ($22,000) for each toilet – about $5,000 more per toilet than the price listed on the company’s website. The difference between the price listed on the website and the stated state purchase price is even larger, considering that the company gives discounts for bulk purchases.
If the toilets aren’t installed by October, they will have to wait until next year, because the installment process can’t be undertaken during the winter. Installation of each toilet will cost between $10,000-20,000.
Meanwhile, in early June, the city installed toilets of another kind made by a Russian company called Bio Ecologiya, costing 449,500 rubles, or about $18,000 each.
BigBoard’s Golowinski said the Bio Ecologiya toilets have been mistakenly taken for BigBoard’s toilets in the press, with published information ascribing the European-standard prices to the Russian-made toilets.
The St. Petersburg-based Bio Ecologiya sold its two first toilets to Kyiv a year ago and supplied the city with another 10 last March.
According to Olga Kostrova, an assistant with the toilet module department at the Bio Ecologiya, the company received the order for toilets from Kyiv authorities through a commercial structure in Ukraine that Kostrova was unable to name, but which Kostrova said contacted Bio Ecologiya after it visited the World Toilet Summit in Moscow in September 2006.
Kostrova said that Bio Ecologiya is currently negotiating with the Ukrainian side on installing more toilets in Kyiv, as well as a new batch of facilities in Odessa. She said that Bio Ecologiya’s plans may include toilet sales in all of Ukraine’s big cities in the future.
As for BigBoard’s claims regarding Bio Ecologiya’s toilets, Bio Ecologiya representatives say they know nothing about them.
According to the city administration’s Barinov, the facilities that the city bought from Bio Ecologia had already been purchased in 2006, before the agreement with BigBoard in 2007. He said that the agreement with BigBoard remains in force and the last issues are currently being agreed with the Shevchenkivskiy district council.
“We support the BigBoard project, though there are also other moments that the project depends on,” he said.
Meanwhile, BigBoard has since unveiled two new toilets in Kharkiv and one in Odessa. The toilet in Odessa became operational Sept. 2.
According to Ukrainian Media Monitor, BigBoard is the number one advertiser in terms of the number of “planes,” with a total of 3,707. The company Star is second with 3,404.
