Proposal for New Library

Published: 2/26/2003

Last year, the Town Board received recommendations from Citizen Advisory Committees regarding the Library and a proposed Community Center. At that time the recommendations were tabled in deference to the community debate that was on going relative to the school facility issues. In identifying our priorities for 2003, the Town Board and I announced that we would revisit these recommendations in the first quarter of this year.

At our last Town Board meeting, we did discuss the issue of facilities and have developed a strategy to move this discussion into the public forum. In doing so, we have announced our desire to move forward with the Library and have made the commitment to keep the Library in its current location.

In making this decision, the Town Board and I came to certain conclusions about facilities that really influenced us. One conclusion was our commitment to maintaining a strong Village center. Another conclusion is our belief that there seems to be a consensus in the community on the need to improve our Library. We do not believe that such a consensus exists on the Community Center and would like to engage the community in a separate and focused discussion at a later date. A final conclusion that we arrived at is that the economy continues to be a concern and did not want to put too much on the plate of this community at this time.

In reviewing the recommendations arrived at by the two Citizen Committees, the Town Board and I are impressed with the methodology used and the thoughtfulness of their conclusions. Before discussing facilities, the committees went through a visioning process to determine the level of library and recreational services that this community would need in 2010. From there, professionals worked with the Citizen Committees to determine programming space that would be needed which essentially determined the total square footage needed to provide future services.

Both committees came to a nearly unanimous decision around the visioning and square footage requirements. Their next step was to look at alternatives for facility improvements that ranged from utilizing the existing buildings that house our library and recreational services to constructing new facilities on current or alternative sites.

The recommendation of the Community Center Advisory Committee is to build a new 51,172 square foot facility and they further proposed that this be built on the site recently acquired by the town adjacent to the Erie Canal. The cost of this recommendation is $10.3 million. As part of the recommendation, they requested consideration for a combined Community Center and Library and also asked for consideration of a community pool sometime in the future.

The recommendation of the Library Advisory Committee is to build a new 29,410 square foot library. However they could not come to consensus on a specific location. Instead they offered two alternative plans for the construction of a new library on the current site, one of which had a 75 car parking lot at a cost of $7.6 million, and the other had a 100 car underground parking garage and a 50 car parking lot at a cost of $10.5 million. The committee also offered a separate alternative to build a new library and a 150 car parking lot on the site recently acquired by the town adjacent to the Erie Canal, the cost of which was estimated at $7.0 million.

In January of this year, I met with the professional design team and asked them to critique the plans proposed for rebuilding the library in its current spot. One concern raised was by traffic planners who said that having all traffic funneled to a traffic signal at State Street and South Street was going to be problematic and recommended developing a plan that provides multiple points of ingress and egress.

A second concern raised was relative to parking. All were in agreement that an underground parking structure would be costly to build and maintain. There was further concern expressed for its aesthetics, practicality in the village setting and question as to whether people would use an underground parking garage.

In response to this I charged the professional design team with developing alternative plans to allow us to overcome these obstacles so we can keep the library in its current location. To their credit they came back with two simple modifications to the plan. By acquiring some additional property, a parking lot that would hold approximately 125 cars could be constructed, thus eliminating any need for parking garages. They also suggested that this would allow for discussion of linking the Library, Canandaigua National Bank and Town parking lots to maximize spaces and provide for interconnections. This helps to ease the traffic issues by allowing several entries and exits along State Street as well as onto North Main Street.

This alternative plan is also beneficial in that it provides a reasonable economic alternative. While we are still in the process of developing firmer financial estimates, we believe that this project can be completed for $7.5 to $8.0 million.

Our next step will be to engage residents in this discussion. To do this we will be holding a design workshop in April to get some input on some of the critical issues including architectural concepts, parking layouts and traffic patterns. Following that I am sure that we will be holding additional public input sessions. While this facility project will ultimately be presented to residents to vote on, there is no time frame for doing so at this time.

The best part of this decision is that now we can shift from a discussion of location to a discussion about the library services we will be able to offer. We are excited about the proposed library as it affords us the opportunity to bring expanded services to our residents in a new and exciting way. Picture this - lively and fun children's programs in a safe and secure environment, comfy chairs and a café that entice you to sit and stay awhile, a homework center that allows for student interaction with the assistance of quality library resources and technology, inviting meeting rooms and spacious work areas. All this becomes possible in Pittsford with the new vision and concept we have for a progressive and customer-oriented community library and gathering space.

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