Some residents are still riled up over library costs
By JOHN F. MULLER Special to the Daily Press
DOWNTOWN — A crowd of about 120 top city staffers, elected officials and local residents was on hand Tuesday to celebrate the progress of the new $73.9 million Main Library.
The 104,000-square-foot facility, which will include a large central courtyard, an auditorium, a museum and a three-level subterranean parking garage with 500 spaces, should be open by 2006, according to officials. Since the former Main Library closed for construction in spring 2003, the city has been operating a temporary main branch at 1324 Fifth St.
Officials gathered Tuesday for the library’s “topping off” ceremony — when the highest structural element of a building is about to be put into place. Those on hand signed the library’s first “Today is a milestone,” said City Councilman Kevin McKeown, as he addressed the sun-baked crowd. “But this is really just a glimmer of the excitement we will feel 18 months from now when this library opens.” The project, which will have employed more than 400 individual consultants and skilled craftsman by its completion, has remained on schedule and on budget, said Assistant City Manager Gordon Anderson.
With $57.7 million going to the main building, $2 million to branch renovations, $1.3 million to the Santa Monica Historical Society Museum and $12.9 million to the parking garage — to be located beneath the library — the project is expected to cost $73.9 million when all is said and done. Officials said the improvements were prompted by requests made by Santa Monica residents during a formal planning process begun in 1996.
Voters in 1998 overwhelmingly approved a $25 million bond to pay for part of the project, and passed a bond to purchase the land for the library’s expansion. The remaining $48.9 million will come from city redevelopment and capital improvement funds.
The library, which was designed by architects Moore Ruble Yudell of Santa Monica, will include multiple entrances, garden spaces and window walls on the ground level. Interior streets will direct visitors to major activity centers, such as a large area for children and young adults, a fiction and popular collections area and a grand reading room.
The second floor will focus on research with the nonfiction, reference and periodicals collections. It will also contain study rooms, a quiet reading area, a computer commons, a computer training room and community meeting rooms.
Greg Mullen, the acting city librarian, said the new library will be an improvement over the old library — constructed in 1965 — in every regard. He said it will provide more accessibility to books, materials and technology, as well as allow for more services for children and young adults. According to Mullen, the new library will have more room for community functions and more flexibility to adapt to future technology changes.
Not all Santa Monica residents have been sold on the costs of the $73.9 million project. At a City Council meeting shortly before the library was demolished in 2003, many residents expressed concerns with City Hall’s decision to spend money on the library instead of addressing other city problems like traffic, homelessness and education.
Ken Breisch, the chair of the city’s library board, said the project would act as more than just a library.
“Projects of this sort happen once or twice in a century in communities like this,” he said. “This will be a prominent memorial and monument to the civic discourse for which Santa Monica has become famous — or, I should say, infamous — and which made the creation of this library possible.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 11, 2004. Read the original PDF.