It’s not back to the drawing board for the planned public restrooms in Ocean Beach at the foot of Brighton Street, but the project has been dealt a significant setback. The Brighton Street Comfort Station, as the project is officially called, will require more time and effort to find a contractor, take more time to construct and cost more to build than previously estimated. That hard truth became apparent last month when the city received only four bids — a disappointingly low number — to build the project. The city then rejected all four, said Kevin Oliver, project officer at the city’s Engineering and Capital Projects Department, who appeared Feb. 2 at the monthly meeting of the Ocean Beach Planning Board. The bottom line is the building — originally envisioned as being ready this summer — won’t even have a groundbreaking until after Labor Day, and could need an as-yet-unidentified $200,000 in additional funding, Oliver said. The building was closed in July 2009 because of structural concerns and was subsequently demolished except for the two still-functioning outside showers. A string of portable toilets have been there since. Of the four bids, two were ruled invalid for not following format or other reasons, and the other two would have busted the budget. The lower of the two valid bids came in at $798,000 — significantly higher than the architect’s estimate, which was “in the mid-$500,000s,” Oliver said. The city has allocated $685,000 for the entire budget. To date, about $137,000 has been spent on design, project management, permitting, surveying and demolition of the existing building, he said. Based on the bid response, Oliver believes the project could need another $200,000, though “it’s hard to have a barometer when you get so few bids,” he said. The next step is to modify the bid package to attract more contractors. The previous bid package had called for an expedited construction schedule, with the building fully functional by Fourth of July weekend. “That may have scared off some contractors and added to the cost,” Oliver said. That hurry-up requirement will be dropped and more “flexibility and perhaps a little more imagination in terms of construction materials and approaches” will be allowed, he said. These changes result from feedback from people in the construction industry, who were contacted in the wake of the disappointing response. For example, Oliver said, “We had called for a steel roofing system. The comments coming back were that the cost could be lowered by going to a concrete roof.” The new building has been designed to last 50 years or more, and the idea behind the new bid package will be to enforce that performance standard, rather than require specific materials, Oliver said. “Someone could come in and say they could do it cheaper with porcelain toilets. Obviously, that wouldn’t last more than one month in an outdoor, unsupervised recreational facility.” Oliver said there were other reasons for not bidding mentioned by contractors: the bid period coincided with the holiday season and end-of-the-year bookkeeping, competition with other entities putting projects out to bid and the bad economy that caused contractors to go out of business or consolidate. “This community really needs a [restroom] at that location,” said Ocean Beach Planning Board Chairman Giovanni Ingolia. “That’s one thing you consistently hear. People have been inquiring about it, and it’s disheartening to tell them it’s not going to happen [this summer].”