The Cupertino Courier New library appears to be in the city's future By Steve Enders The City Council announced on Oct. 5 it will likely build a new library in the parking lot of the current one, ruling out other options in its plans for a new library. The city also plans to add a parking structure underneath the new building. The council hired an architectural firm, BSA, to study options for a new building. BSA is the same firm currently working on expanding the city's Senior Center. The declaration that the city will move into the project's next phase came at the Oct. 5 City Council meeting in a report from Bert Viskovich, the city's public works director. The Library Expansion Committee opted for the new building so that it could keep Library Field and the grassy plaza in the middle of the Civic Center, Viskovich said. The plan will also make the existing library available for other purposes. Viskovich emphasized that the plans are still very preliminary. "City Hall is running out of space," Viskovich said, adding that many space-filling records and files could be kept somewhere else. He said ideas for the existing library include building a new City Council chamber and creating a place where other community groups can hold activities. The committee is also considering establishing a teen center there. The architects will look into the options behind a 70,000- and a 55,000-square-foot building. The larger of the two is closest to library consultant David Smith's study, which called for the construction of a 69,000-square-foot building. At an August meeting, councilmembers were reluctant to make a decision to construct a new building because they were concerned about its scope and cost. At that time, the options before councilmembers were keeping the existing library, adding on to it or knocking it down and building a new structure. They also considered building a new library on Library Field. In terms of constructing a new building, the only choice councilmembers had was the large structure suggested by Smith. Now that a smaller building is on the drawing board, councilmembers are more relaxed about moving on. The expansion committee estimated that the larger structure would cost about $22 million and the smaller one about $19 million. The smaller building would be almost double the size of the existing library, Viskovich said. He said that the city could save $2 million by not having to build an underground parking lot, but expansion committee members placed a higher priority on saving the two fields around the Civic Center. "The existing plaza would be the focal point and entryway to the three buildings," Viskovich said. He said that BSA will be done with its study in six to eight weeks, and will present the expansion committee with floor and site plans of the two building options. Eventually, the city will request more detailed plans for the library and explore options on what to do with the current City Hall and library buildings. One of the most important portions of the entire process--a public survey--will also take place before anything is ever built, Viskovich said. "We're going to conduct an exhaustive outreach program with the community before we even start embarking on a project," Viskovich said. Mary Ann Wallace, the city's librarian, as well as many others on the library expansion committee, feel the time is right for a new city library to be built. The current one, at 37,000 square feet, is heavily used and its inside space is very inefficient, she said. Its current collections are spread over five floors, and the staff checks out 478 items an hour. [ Back to Contents Page | Cupertino Courier Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Cupertino Courier, October 14, 1998. ©1998 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.