The `Sitting room' | Portable toilets: Lockport firm supplies Olympic facilities

The company has sent portable restrooms to the Super Bowl, golf tournaments on Professional Golfers' Association tour and fashionable weddings.

When Black Tie Services sends a portable rest room, it also sends an attendant to make sure the users are comfortable.

Bandauski likes to talk about the reaction his rest rooms get.

"We have women -- and guys will do this as well -- but women will drag other women into the rest room and say, `Look at this,'" he said.

Bandauski has seen a lot of places in his four years in the upscale portable rest room business.

His rest rooms even went to the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to assist the recovery efforts a couple of days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But the order from the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City marks a benchmark moment for his company.

Black Tie Services is providing portable rest rooms that meet the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The company is sending 21 units so far (Bandauski said orders keep coming in.) to the Winter Olympics, and 14 of those are ADA designed.

It's the first time Black Tie Services has had such a request, and Bandauski said he does not know of any such portable facilities ever built to be compatible with ADA requirements.

The height of the toilets and sinks were adjusted, the doorway was widened, and enough space was created to ensure a wheelchair could move around the eight-by-eight food unit.

The rest room -- or pod as Black Tie Services calls it -- gets the special touches as well.

The wainscoting is oak, a corner shelf is in place for flower vases, and the facility is equipped with heating and an electrical outlet.

Who needs an electrical outlet in a portable rest room.

"Your hair dryer, your electric toothbrush," Bandauski answered.

"It's amazing the things that happen."

Bandauski was in the portable toilet business before he started his company.

Previously, he worked with his brothers who run Portable John just down Canal Street from where Black Tie Services is located.

One day, Bandauski said, he was invited to attend a PGA golf tournament to find out what kind of accommodations the tour would need when it came to the Medinah Country Club.

"They said they wanted something that would reflect the prestige of their tournament," he said.

The more he talked, the more he realized there was a demand for a better outhouse -- or at least a more prestigious one.

And, because of the costs of constructing a fancy portable rest room, not too many were being made.

The cost for one of the more modest of Black Tie Services' portable rest rooms is $22,000.

They go up in price and in scale.

Black Tie Services make rest rooms with showers, rest rooms that can converted to showers, portable kitchen, facilities as big as semitrailers, and units with two floors.

The most expensive unit his company has built costs $380,000.

Customers pay $1,000 to $3,000 per unit for the length of an event, and Black Tie Services was at 400 events last year.

But because of the investment required in the business, Black Tie Services has yet to turn a profit, although Bandauski expects that to happen in 2002.

The company employs 35 workers, including marketing people, engineers, construction crews and transportation employees.

Black Tie Services has 13 distribution sites.

The recession has hurt business a bit, particularly because of the impact on the special events business, Bandauski said.

But he expects the demand for upscale portable rest rooms will last.

"It's just the evolution of society," he said.

"As society evolves, people aren't used to taking no for an answer.

Rest rooms are one of the primal needs that we have."