Temporary Library Opens Monday

By Lookout Staff

May 11 – The Main Library will open its doors Monday at a three-story bank building on Fifth Street that will temporarily house most of the 250,000-volume collection, furniture and equipment moved from the old facility to pave the way for the wrecking ball.

The City will lease the building at 1324 Fifth Street for two years, while construction of the new $57 million facility at the old Main Library site on Sixth Street is underway.

The temporary Main Library will offer reference, readers’ advisory, public access Internet and telephone services and will be open 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday; 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m.

The temporary facility has new library materials and selections from the fllowing collections: nonfiction, fiction, mysteries, science fiction, graphic novels, paperbacks, current newspapers and magazines, videos, DVDs, CDs, audio books, language learning tapes and CDs, reference materials, young adult, and a core children’s collection.

The Main Library children’s collection has been largely relocated to the Ocean Park Branch Library, 2601 Main Street. Large print book collections have been expanded at the Montana Avenue Branch Library, 1704 Montana Avenue; the Ken Edwards Center, 1527 Fourth Street; and the Senior Recreation Center, 1450 Ocean Avenue.

The rest of the Main Library’s collections, including bound magazines, international language books and government documents, will be stored off site and will not be available until the new Main Library is completed in 2005.

Space for programs in the Temporary Library is also limited. Children’s, teen and adult programs continue at branch libraries, City parks and other convenient City facilities.

The library's move to its home on Fifth Street cost about $137,000 and was handled by the Beltmann Group. Morley Construction, builders of the new Cathedral in Downtown LA, will handle demolition and construction of the new 102,508-square-foot, two-story Main Library, designed by the architectural firm Moore Ruble Yudell.

The new facility boasts nearly twice the floor space, swells the existing collection by 50,000 volumes and nearly triples the parking space of the old facility.

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.