The Oilers Entertainment Group is responding to complaints of long lines to use the women’s bathrooms at the new Rogers Place arena.
During the first two concerts at the downtown Edmonton venue – the Keith Urban and Dolly Parton shows – some patrons voiced concerns with the long lines to use the facilities.
“There was no way to get into the bathroom at intermission,” Wendy Cotterhill-Devaux said after attending the Dolly Parton concert. “The lineups were horribly long. I went back to my seat, waited for Dolly to start and went back to the bathroom.”
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However, the OEG’s Stew MacDonald said the problem is not how many bathrooms there are, but whether or not people can find them.
“The biggest piece we got is people finding the building,” he said. “The first two nights – with Keith Urban and Dolly Parton – shortly after the doors opened, there was a line up at the ladies washroom on the south side of the building just off the main entrance but on the upper concourse or on the main concourse on the north side, the bathrooms were completely empty.
“A lot of that will be people just getting to know the building as they are coming through.”
Rogers Place has 68 bathrooms. There is at least one family and gender-neutral washroom on every concourse. Eighteen bathrooms are equipped with change tables.
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MacDonald couldn’t provide the ratio of men’s to women’s facilities but said “certainly, they exceed the requirements for the building.”
Unlike Rexall Place, Rogers Place has washrooms on every level.
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