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How Salem rallied after the government shutdown closed bathrooms during its busy Halloween season
"Salem steps up time and time again—to protect our businesses, our visitors, and our residents."
More than one million people visit Salem in October, which makes every public restroom crucial.
So when the government shutdown closed the National Park Service (NPS) Armory Regional Visitor Center on Oct. 1, the community sprang into action.
The city’s monthlong Haunted Happenings festival brings worldwide visitors looking for Halloween fun that includes shopping, tours, haunted houses, museums, and more. Last year, the festival shattered tourism records, welcoming 87,351 people on Oct. 31 alone.
“We don’t want anyone coming here and having a negative experience,” Ashley Judge, executive director of Destination Salem, told WBUR. “And so it was really important that this not become the crummy year — the year without bathrooms. It was a problem we needed to solve.”
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Annie Harris, CEO of the Essex National Heritage Commission, a nonprofit that preserves and enhances the history and culture of Essex County, knew the center’s resources and restrooms would be sorely missed.
“The visitor center has some of the best bathrooms in Salem, so it’s very popular,” Harris told WBUR. “It’s one of the few places that you could have a real bathroom and not have to go to a porta-potty.”
Harris reached out to Salem Maritime National Historical Park (America’s oldest National Historic Site), which manages the center, and learned that it could reopen if all operating costs for the month of October were paid up front, wrote Jeff Cohen, Salem Ward 5 Councilor, in a statement.
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She also reached out to Salem’s Mayor Dominick Pangallo, who devised a donation agreement between the National Park Service, Essex Heritage, and Eastern National, which runs the center’s gift shop, reported WBUR.
The center reopened on Oct. 7 and will be funded through Nov. 2 after local organizations and businesses donated the estimated $18,600 needed for bathroom cleaning, utilities, and the 10.5% overhead fee, according to Cohen.
The Salem Witch Museum provided an $8,000 donation, wrote Cohen, and other donations were made by Eastern National, Destination Salem, Peabody Essex Museum, the Salem Wax Museum, and Creative Collective.
Staffing for the center is being provided by Essex Heritage five days a week and Eastern National seven days a week at no cost, according to Cohen, and Essex Heritage is also contributing three workers from the organization’s Future Leaders program.
The National Park Service Armory Regional Visitor Center is open daily from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Visitors can discover the location of all public bathrooms on the city’s Haunted Happenings website.
“We want to recognize the extraordinary collaboration that made this happen,” wrote Judge on the Salem.org blog. “Salem steps up time and time again—to protect our businesses, our visitors, and our residents.”
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