Planning Commission Sends New Library Back for Redesign

By Oliver Lukacs

Jan 9 -- Objecting to its "boxyness" and "soulless" features and calling it "hospital-like," the Planning Commission Wednesday night sent back to the drawing board the design of the new Main Library, effectively freezing for at least another month the machinery of construction ready to break ground.

Led by Commissioner Kelly Olsen -- who held steadfastly to the belief that the mandate of the City Council, who approved the design, is not superior to the commission's -- the members agreed not to give any special streamlined treatment to the project and to treat the City as "just another applicant."

To avoid a complete standstill, however, the commission unanimously gave a thumbs-up to the Environmental Impact Report and to the necessary variances for the 102,058-square-foot, two-story project.

The approvals were needed to convert a three-story bank building on 5th Street leased by the City into a temporary library for two years, while the new structure is raised on the site of the 1965 original.

Though the commission initially seemed impressed with the white-walled, glassy model -- capped with sloping roofs surrounding a center courtyard with a café and dotted with pocket gardens -- by the end of the night one commission member seemed ready to scrap the whole project.

While calling the design "wonderful," Arlene Hopkins, the only architect among the seven commissioners, wondered whether renovating and expanding the existing library, instead of replacing it at a cost of $57 million, wouldn't give the City a better bang for the money.

"I just want to be sure we're getting a return on our investment," said Hopkins, who called the project "over-scaled," and worried that the added space was being underutilized.

Largely bankrolled with a $25 million bond passed by voters in 1998, the new library boasts nearly twice the floor space and nearly triples the parking space of the original, but swells the existing 250,000-volume collection by only by 50,000.

Roughly $21 million of the $57 million price tag comes from the City's capital improvement budget, Hopkins noted, adding that "for that $21 (million) we're getting 50,000 volumes and roughly 300 seats of public space."

Hopkins later suggested that the City Council could use that money to bridge an $8.5 million budget gap projected for the upcoming fiscal year.

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.

Citing City Hall as an ideal model, Olsen -- who noted he is 70 years behind in architectural taste, preferring 30s and 40s design -- said the new library has a "modern, industrial, kind of hospital-like look to it."

John Ruble, of the firm Moore Ruble Yudell Architects & Planners, defended his firm's design, saying that the new structure will have a similar community-friendly "civic dignity" exuded by City Hall and the Post Office. "And while that is important," Ruble said, "we don't want to be too beholden to any precedent. We don't want to make it something it isn't."

Referring to the massive glass façade facing Santa Monica Boulevard, Ruble said that while all the glass makes it different, it will be not "just a building you will be looking into, but through," which makes it equally, if not more, "warm, and welcoming."

In keeping with Santa Monica's quest for pedestrian orientation, the façade allows passersby to witness the bustle inside. Pedestrians can even see through the building into the center courtyard, where library goers can take materials to read over coffee at a café surrounded by greenery next to a work of art that interacts with a small "arc of water."

Library Board member Ken Breisch, a former Planning Commissioner who wrote his PhD on public libraries, and who along with City Librarian Winni Allard was the only public speaker, disagreed with the criticisms.

"The American public library being a great democratic institution, it is another wonderful kind of metaphor that comes through the design," said Breisch. "Although it is a very modern design, which I appreciate, it also resonates with the whole history of libraries."

But Commissioner Jay Johnson was "disappointed" at the 6th Street façade, a busy intersection across the street from the YMCA, saying it is dull and doesn't have the same "exciting see-through feeling" the rest of the window and glass-lined facades show to passersby.

Olsen pointed out to the commission that the most frequently seen corner of the library will be on 7th Street and Santa Monica Blvd, where the building is "non-interactive, blank, non-inviting," and "soulless."

Ruble said, "That's a good point," and agreed to revise it.

As part of the compromise to move the project ahead but postpone the design approval to a special meeting on February 12, the commission reluctantly certified the Environmental Impact Report. The telephone-book-sized tome -- which the commission received a week ago -- identifies "significant and unavoidable" traffic impacts at 5 intersections.

While the EIR approval was unanimous, the commission was displeased with the findings on the traffic impacts. Noting that "the traffic counts are ridiculously incorrect," Olsen and the board agreed to certify the report because without it the City could not begin to move on the temporary space, which it has already leased.

To the same purpose, the commission also approved a variance to reduce the required parking at the former bank from 98 to 23 parking spaces.

Serviced by 75 percent of the existing staff, the former bank on 1324 Fifth Street 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.