MTA removes porta-potty from NYC restaurant destination after The Post’s report on construction chaos causes a stink
This smells like progress.
The MTA quietly moved a porta-potty away from a Forest Hills restaurant — providing some relief to the shop owner who said construction chaos was flushing his business down the toilet.
The pungent, bright orange call-a-head was moved from the eatery’s front doors down the block around 7 a.m. Monday, the same day The Post published a story detailing how an ongoing transit project at the neighborhood’s Long Island Rail Road station has turned Ascan Avenue into a “war zone.”
“They’re guilty,” Paul Singh, who owns the adjoining White Radish and Daikon Sushi Bar storefronts, said Tuesday, alleging that the MTA only moved the porta-potty in response to the media coverage.
“I am just saying what’s true and what people are also saying. I am getting the attention because of the support that I’m getting. And the public finds this truth truthful, the discoveries that we have shared all across the board.”
The portable toilet had been stationed outside Singh’s businesses since February when the MTA restarted a project to make the neighborhood LIRR station ADA-compliant. It was briefly suspended last year when a new congestion toll to enter midtown — and the funding it would have brought the MTA — was temporarily halted.
The noise of the construction, the stench of the portable toilet and the massive fence blocking his shops from view have cost the father of one an estimated $300,000, he claimed — which has forced him to scale back his restaurant’s hours and slash his full-time staff from 24 to 14.
The White Radish, which also encompasses the Daikon Sushi Bar, is one of the 2,400 businesses approved to set up outdoor dining this season — but the portable toilet and ongoing construction have destroyed Singh’s hopes of putting his $20,000 dining tables and chairs to use, he claims.
He had desperately pleaded that the transit agency move the portable toilet and construction dumpster away from his street’s businesses, but his pleas went unanswered before Monday.
While he celebrated the toilet removal as a small win, Singh begged the MTA to finish the job and take down the offensive fencing and dumpster.
“This will absolutely not improve my business until they remove all this. They took over the space and destroyed the businesses,” Singh told The Post.
“They knew that this was something that they must not have done.”
The MTA did not respond to a request for comment Monday but had previously said representatives of the agency had been in communication with Singh.
But the business owner said he has heard nothing and claimed the MTA hadn’t even reached out to him to let him know they would finally be moving the portable toilet after months of requests. He said he discovered the change himself on Monday.
“That’s what the problem is. They have been lying since day one,” he said.
Singh wouldn’t say “hopeful” the MTA would remove the dumpster and construction fence ahead of its anticipated 2026 takedown date, but said it would be the right thing to do.
“They have to. There’s no choice, there will be no choice,” said Singh.
“They should do the right thing. I just want to work, that’s the whole point.”
