According to the "San Francisco Chronicle" report on the 19th, the city of San Francisco, California will build a new public toilet in the Noe Valley community square in the city center. This would have been a very good thing for a city with few public toilets. But after the construction cost was announced, the matter raised doubts.

The 150-square-foot public toilet is expected to cost $1.7 million to build, roughly the price of a single-family home in the city, according to reports. And the public toilet is not expected to be completed until 2025.

NBC News contacted the San Francisco Park Service to inquire about the specific cost but did not receive a response.

However, the department and the San Francisco Department of Works said in a joint statement that the cost is high for several reasons: For example, it is very expensive to build anything in the city of San Francisco. Local construction costs have risen by 20 to 30 percent over the past few years due to global supply chain issues and rising fuel, labor, and material costs. Public projects and their overall cost estimates reflect not only construction work expenditures, but also planning, drafting, permitting, review, and publicity costs.

NBC News said California and local government officials were supposed to issue a statement Wednesday announcing the success of securing the grant from the state, but they abruptly scrapped their plans after news of the cost broke.

Dalia Martinez, a former San Francisco resident, "It sounds suspicious. It's suspicious considering they were going to announce it today, but it's abruptly canceled."

Todd David, a resident of the Noe Valley community, told the San Francisco Chronicle that his neighbors were happy to finally have a toilet after years of pleas. But he got a lot of questions about why it was so expensive. "It's a shocking figure on the price tag," he said. "Oh my god, it's so expensive."

Rudy Gonzalez, treasurer of the San Francisco Building and Construction Industry Council, said the $1.7 million price sounded unbelievable and questioned how the city came to that figure.

Tom Hardiman, executive director of the Modular Building Institute in Virginia, said he nearly had a heart attack when he learned the number. He asked: "Is this going to build a public toilet? What are they going to build with gold and fine Italian marble?"