Military Academy – Commercial Restroom Renovation

Project Spotlight: Solid Plastic Toilet Partition Installation at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, Great Neck, NY

A stadium restroom takes more abuse than almost any other room in a facility. Hundreds of users in short bursts, wet floors, aggressive cleaning schedules, and doors that get pushed hard and often. When the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) at 30 Steamboat Road in Great Neck needed its stadium restrooms rebuilt to stand up to that traffic, Mavi New York supplied and installed a complete solid plastic toilet partition installation along with a full package of commercial-grade stainless steel accessories.

Here’s what went into the project — and why the material and hardware choices matter for any school, stadium, or government facility planning a restroom renovation.

The scope: partitions plus a coordinated accessory package

Mavi New York handled two coordinated scopes at the Academy’s stadium facility:

Solid plastic (HDPE) toilet partitions. We installed a long run of floor-anchored, headrail-braced stalls in a black solid plastic finish. HDPE — high-density polyethylene, a solid plastic panel with color running all the way through — was selected because it doesn’t rust, doesn’t delaminate, and shrugs off the moisture and cleaning chemicals that destroy painted metal partitions in high-traffic athletic facilities. Each stall was set with continuous stainless steel wall brackets and heavy-duty hinges, with pilasters anchored to the slab and capped in stainless shoes.

Commercial restroom accessories by ASI (American Specialties, Inc.). Alongside the partitions, we furnished and installed:

All units are Type 304 stainless steel in a satin finish — the standard for facilities that need fixtures to survive daily commercial cleaning without staining or corroding.

Why solid plastic was the right call for a stadium restroom

Powder-coated steel partitions are the budget default in a lot of buildings, but in a stadium environment near the water in Great Neck, they’re a short-term answer. Humidity and mop water find the seams, and rust starts creeping up from the floor within a few years.

Solid plastic panels are a full inch thick with color throughout, so scratches don’t expose a different-colored core, graffiti wipes off the non-porous surface, and the panels can be power-washed. Doors dent-and-recover rather than crease. For locker rooms, pool areas, stadiums, and school restrooms, HDPE consistently delivers the lowest cost of ownership even when its upfront price is higher — because it’s usually the last set of partitions the room will need.

The headrail-braced configuration — an anodized aluminum rail running continuously along the top of the pilasters — ties the whole run together and keeps doors aligned even when they’re used hard, which in a stadium they will be.

The details that separate a clean install from a callback

Partition installation looks simple until it isn’t. A few of the things our crews handled on this project that make the difference:

Layout against real field conditions. Block walls are rarely perfectly plumb. We laid out each run to the actual wall conditions so gaps stay tight and doors swing true, rather than trusting drawing dimensions.

Partition-mounted accessories cut correctly. The dual-access sanitary disposals mount through the partition panel, serving two stalls from one unit. That requires a precise cutout in the HDPE panel — get it wrong and you’ve scrapped a panel. Our installers cut and mounted all three units per ASI’s technical data sheet.

ADA mounting heights throughout. Every dispenser and disposal was set to the mounting heights called out in the manufacturer’s data sheets for compliance with the 2010 ADA Standards — soap valves, tissue dispensers, and disposal door heights all verified against finished floor.

Coordination with the rest of the renovation. The restrooms also received new epoxy flooring and wall-hung lavatories. We sequenced the partition install so anchoring happened after flooring was complete, protecting the new finish.

What this means for your facility

If you manage a school, stadium, government facility, or athletic complex in the New York metro area, this project is a good template: solid plastic partitions for the abuse, stainless steel accessories for the longevity, and one installer responsible for making the partitions and the partition-mounted accessories work together. Splitting those scopes between vendors is where cutout mistakes and mounting-height misses come from.

Frequently asked questions

How long do solid plastic toilet partitions last? HDPE partitions routinely last 20+ years in high-traffic facilities. Because the color runs through the full panel thickness, they don’t show wear the way painted metal does, and most manufacturers back them with warranties far longer than metal partitions.

Can toilet partitions be installed while a facility stays open? Usually, yes. Restroom renovations are typically phased so some fixtures stay in service, or scheduled around the facility’s calendar — for athletic facilities, off-season windows work best.

What accessories mount to the partition instead of the wall? Dual-access sanitary disposals, some tissue dispensers, and grab bars on certain configurations mount directly to the partition panel or pilaster. They require precise cutouts and the panel thickness must be verified against the unit’s mounting range.

Do you install partitions on Long Island? Yes. Mavi New York supplies and installs toilet partitions and Division 10 accessories throughout the New York metropolitan area — including Long Island, all five boroughs, Westchester — plus New Jersey and Connecticut.

Planning a restroom renovation?

Send us your drawings or a few photos of the existing restrooms and we’ll put together a takeoff and quote for partitions and accessories — supplied, delivered, and installed by one team. Request a quote or call us.