Library committee chooses its site and building design
By Kara Chalmers
The new expanded and renovated Saratoga Community Library will have an on-grade parking lot and will be a one-story structure to preserve as much of the orchard as possible, said Marcia Manzo, chairwoman of the library expansion committee.
At a meeting on Oct. 16, with the library architect Mark Schatz, from BSA Architects, the public had a chance to pick by majority vote, which site plan and which building design they liked the best. At a meeting the next night, the planning commission, the public safety commission, the library commission and the heritage preservation commission had their chance. It was then up to the library expansion committee to make the final choice on Oct. 19.
"We have told the architect to move ahead with the one-story design based on input from the public," Manzo said.
The library will be expanded, thanks to a $15 million bond measure that Saratoga voters passed in March. The building today is 18,000 square feet and the renovation will increase the size of the building to between 46,000 and 49,000 square feet. And with the increase in space will come an increase in parking spaces. There is parking for 95 cars now, but the renovation will mean spaces for about 175 cars, pending the results of a traffic and parking study.
According to head librarian Dolly Barnes, not only will more people use the new library and use it more often, when people come, they will stay longer. She said she expects a 30 percent increase in checkouts.
According to the architect, the goal of the renovation and expansion is to provide a larger, more functional library, making efficient use of space, while maintaining the character of the existing library building.
In terms of parking at the new library, both the Monday and the Tuesday night groups favored on-grade parking at the new library, rather than a split-level parking structure, which had been one of the options--option B. So the committee chose the site plan labeled C by the architect, which concentrates cars in a single lot, along Saratoga Avenue, about seven rows, or 100 feet, back from the street. Manzo said that, according to the orchardist for the Heritage Orchard, the more contiguous the orchard the easier it is to maintain.
Option A split parking between two smaller lots and option B put cars in a split level parking deck, which would be the most expensive option other than underground parking, although it would have the smallest footprint.
At the meeting Monday night, only six members of the public supported the split-level lot, while the majority in the packed community room supported the on-grade structure C. No one at the Tuesday night meeting favored a split level parking structure. That night, members of the public safety commission brought up the fact that a structure might pose more safety problems than on-grade parking. All the people on Tuesday night favored site C over A, as well.
In terms of building design, majorities in both groups also favored a one-story structure, so the architect came to the committee with a variation on building schemes A and C that incorporate the things that people liked about both.
Scheme A was the only scheme that included an expansion of the current building out towards Saratoga Avenue, as well as into the orchard. Scheme C had the expansion all to one side--into the orchard--and was the most compact of them all.
The architect came up with a marriage of the two, by adding more adult views into the orchard, keeping the part of the expansion that went out toward Saratoga Avenue and turned the current courtyard into orchard.
Option B was the two-story design that was not favored. It had a clear distinction between the old and the new, with 14,000 square feet in a second story, rising about 10 feet above the library's current height. This scheme minimized the coverage, but Barnes cited disadvantages with it, among them the probability that another staff person would have to be hired.
All three schemes incorporated the current building, which the bond measure language requires. The old building will be renovated completely on the interior. All schemes allowed the community room to stay the same and allowed separate use of the room, for nights and off-hours.
"The interface between the new and the old is going to be complicated and we've got to figure it out," Schatz said Monday night.
Only two people at the Monday night meeting favored the two-story scheme, and the rest of the people were split between schemes A and C. On Tuesday night, a majority favored the one-story building and, again, the rest were split between A and C.
The week of meetings was the second series of workshops held on the library with the architect. The third will come on Nov. 20, at 7 p.m. in city hall and the architect will discuss the proposed building design.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
