The Library Commission voted 6-0-1 Monday to recommend building
a new library near its current site in the Civic Center complex.
The other site under consideration is a lot in the downtown at
Depot and Third streets.
The Library Commission voted 6-0-1 Monday to recommend building a new library near its current site in the Civic Center complex.
The other site under consideration is a lot in the downtown at Deport and Third strets.
The commission recommended the DeWitt/Main Avenue site behind City Hall to the City Council, who will now have to decide for themselves what is best for the most residents. Council will discuss the site on June 23, but will not make a decision until later because Councilman Greg Sellers will be away.
“It’s important that we all take part in the discussion and the vote,” Sellers said Wednesday.
City Manager Ed Tewes told the commission that the council will likely make a commitment to eliminate one site and concentrate on the more viable one; it is not a commitment to actually build a library on the chosen site.
The DeWitt site is near two schools and many neighbors who fiercely object to moving it away. A straw poll taken by the city also turned up a two-to-one vote in favor of the Civic Center.
Rocke Garcia has proposed building a library, on property he owns, rounding the Third Street/Depot Street corner, leaving space on Third for retail or restaurants and several courtyards.
Library Commission chair Jeanne Gregg said Thursday that, even though the commission voted for the old site, they could live with either.
“All commissioners would be happy with either site,” Gregg said, “as long as the downtown concerns could be addressed.”
Gregg said the commission was instructed by Tewes to make their decision from the library point of view.
“The council will consider other points of view,” Gregg reported Tewes saying. “So, on the whole, we thought the downtown site had a lot of positives but Civic Center was easier for library users.”
Gregg said there were three primary problems with the Third Street site: space, parking and congestion.
“The downtown building is 5,000 square-feet short of space on the ground floor to be efficient,” Gregg said, “and, because our operating budget is the smallest in the county, it must be as efficient as possible though librarians say they will work with what the city gives them.”
Parking would be arrayed between the library/retail buildings and a series of condominiums with underground parking facing Fourth Street, two spaces per unit. Extra parking can be found along Third, Depot and Fourth streets with overflow parking in the Caltrain parking lot and, across the fenced and controlled at-grade track crossing, in the new courthouse lot, all an easy walk.
City planners have designed the extra-wide Third Street to be a corridor between the courthouse and Monterey Road restaurants and shops.
But Gregg said she was worried that condominium owners would park their extra vehicles in library spaces.
“The site has too much housing and not enough space for the library or parking,” she said.
Congestion was a concern of commissioners who said there are too many stop lights downtown already – there are three – and it is easier to get to the Civic Center, though further from the active center of town and with several stop signs.
Commissioners Kathleen Stanaway and Ruth Phebus were absent. Phebus, she said, is a librarian and has an entirely different take on the situation.
“Ruth has experience the rest of us don’t have,” Gregg said. “She is a librarian in San Jose and is in favor of the downtown, urban concept.”
Mary Ellen Salzano abstained from the vote.
Chuck Dillmann, the seventh vote, said Monday that he preferred to look at other sites.
There were also concerns about finding enough money to build and operate a new library.
