Willow Grove Park Restroom & Concession

Award Criteria

Architectural Excellence

Willow Grove Park in Fallbrook, California was part of a new housing development in San Diego County, which requires developers to build parks as part of any new subdivision constructed. Architectural excellence was exhibited through a mixture of exterior finishes, a butterfly style roof, and making the building serve more purposes than just one. A multi-functional building including single-occupant restrooms, storage, and a concession stand for the park patrons and sporting events held at the park. The combination of dark brick and a brighter natural CMU block exterior with anti-graffiti coating, and stucco like finish above the cap beam gave the overall building a modern, yet natural look to match the mountainside in the backdrop. Other customizations included were solatubes to incorporate natural light inside the building and a roll-up garage door for easy storage access for larger park maintenance equipment.

Technical Innovation & Sustainability

Located in a public park setting, the building is designed with three core focuses: ease of maintenance, safety, and reducing vandalism. For easy maintenance and reducing vandalism, fixtures (sinks and toilets) are wall-mounted with no exposed plumbing. This makes floors easy to clean and any plumbing or electrical issues can be solved behind scenes at any time of day. By housing all plumbing and electrical in the utility chase, it is kept entirely secure and separate from the public view and access. For public safety to prevent slips and falls, epoxy floor with skid resistant additive was used in all the restrooms. Solatubes were used to cut down on electricity and utilize natural lighting throughout the entire building. An anti-graffiti coating was applied to the building’s exterior block to easily remove any future graffiti.

Cost Effectiveness

When it comes to cost efficiency, the home developer behind this project could focus on doing what they do best and build more homes—while leaving the park restrooms to an expert in modular construction. With the offsite nature of building modular restrooms, no resources were taken away from their construction crews to build out this restroom/concession/storage building. The process allowed them to customize the building to the specific needs of the park, while eliminating time, resources, and potential theft concerns that come with onsite construction sites.