Planning Commission Approves New Library

By Oliver Lukacs

Feb. 13 -- The new Main Library finally turned the corner Wednesday night when the Planning Commission gave a unanimous go-ahead to a design that made the building’s main façade more inviting to pedestrians.

The commission -- which rejected the design for the $57 million library in January for being boxy, “soulless,” and “hospital-like” -- gave the green light after substantial design changes were made to the facade on the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and 7th Street.

The building’s most prominent side was “rather dead looking and it didn’t invite you in,” Commissioner Kelly Olsen said after the meeting.

The architects "made a substantial change on the Santa Monica Boulevard side, which will be seen by most people, and they gave it more visual intrigue and stimulation,” said Olsen, who led the opposition to the design a month ago.

Late last month, the City Council expressed dissatisfaction with the changes made by the architect, Moore Ruble Yudell Architects & Planners, to address concerns echoed by the Planning Commission. The council voted 5 to 2 to add more green space and change the façade finish at the base of the building in a quest to further enhance the structure's pedestrian experience.

But with moving day for the current library fast approaching, the council also voted to approve the funding to build the structure, as well as giving he go-ahead to spend $2.8 million to tear down the existing structure.

The changes brought back Wednesday by the architecture firm transformed the “dead looking” corner into a more inviting pedestrian-friendly edifice by extending the cantilever roof and opening the window space, Olsen said.

“So now you got this roof line that greets you at the beginning of the building at 6th Street and leads you to the entrance, which I thought was creative” Olsen said. “Everybody loved it, and loved us, and everybody is happy in this happy city.”

One commissioner who was not happy about the price-tag of the project was content with the redesign.

Disappointed with new ratio of books per square foot (the design nearly doubles the floor space of the current library to 102,058 square feet but swells the existing 250,000-volume collection only by 50,000 volumes), Commissioner Arlene Hopkins had called the whole project into question last month.

She suggsted that it made more economic sense to extend and renovate the existing library than to tear it down and replace it.

“I just want to be sure we’re getting a return on our investment,” Hopkins said last month.

However, the design improvements have swept away her misgivings. “As a cultural hub of our community, we all support the library,” she said after the meeting. “The revised proposal as presented nicely addressed the land use concerns.”

While the new blueprint cuts the current 240-seat auditorium in half, it doubles the public meeting space by between 300 and 500 seats with a new multi-purpose room.

In addition, the new library will include a community conference room, a tutoring room, a computer lab (with 50 computers), a children's room, an expanded main reading room, a new staff and boardroom and a center courtyard. The facility also will house the Santa Monica Historical Society Museum in 5,000 square feet of space.

The new structure -- which would extend into the current 189-space surface parking lot -- will include a three-level subterranean parking structure with 559 spaces accessed on 7th Street. At least 157 of the spaces will be available to downtown motorists.

During the two years it will take to complete the new structure, the main library will be relocated to a former bank building on 1324 Fifth Street, which will provide roughly 50 percent of the existing library services during normal operation hours. The rest of the current staff will be temporarily relocated to the City's other three branches.

Olsen said speakers at Wednesday’s meeting expressed frustration with the lengthy process, but “as usual” people were “glad we asked for a redesign.