By Lookout Staff

August 7, 2012 -- Santa Monica City Officials will get the ball rolling on the Pico Branch Library -- a project 29 years in the making -- on Wednesday August 15 in Virginia Avenue Park.

Construction on the $12.8 project will finally get underway when Mayor Richard Bloom and representatives of the Pico Neighborhood Association and the Virginia Avenue Park Advisory Board gather at 1 p.m. to break ground.

Proposed Library for Pico. Photo courtesy City of Santa Monica

“This project is the result of many years of planning and collaboration between community members, City staff, the Pico Branch Project Team, and other local stakeholders,” said City staff.

The project was first proposed in the 1983 Pico Neighborhood Community Plan.

The main 7,872-square-foot building adjacent to Virginia Avenue Park’s Thelma Terry Center will house the bulk of the library’s collection and include study rooms and reading areas.

An 818 square-foot community room will be built across the fire lane from the main building and “will be used for story times, educational and cultural programs and will be available for rental by the public,” according to officials.

The buildings will sit at the northern end of the lot where, every Saturday, a local Farmers’ Market is held.

Virginia Avenue Park was chosen as the location for the new library after the City Council turned down a project by the Pico Improvement Organization (PIO) that proposed a three-to-four story “ground up, mixed use, state-of-the-art” facility.

However, with projected costs reaching $30, the City decided on a more modest project.

Still, the new building -- designed by Santa Monica’s Koning Eizenberg Architecture --will be seeking a LEED gold rating, the highest level of sustainable design, from the U.S. Green Building Council.