The Library Board is ready to ask the City Council next Tuesday to approve the sale of $35 million in bonds to pay for upgrades to Peoria’s library system, including building a new branch in far north Peoria.
You may have heard the library’s director Ed Szynaka on the radio recently giving an update on where the library is in the process. It’s been a long year. The library has completed the programming phase of the process, and now they’re working on negotiating a site for the north branch. Negotiations will be more meaningful if they are able to talk real money, which is why they want the council to okay the bond issuance.
I got a chance to talk to Gary Sandberg, City Council liaison to the Library Board for this project. Everyone knows the library board had a couple of missteps early in the process, but Gary got them to agree to go through a deliberate and open process.
He showed me how they developed criteria for what features a new library site would need, and then went out and found sites that met the criteria to varying degrees. They put all that data in a matrix and ranked the sites by how well they met the criteria. The most favored site before this process (old K’s Merchandise building) came in third or fourth. The top two sites identified, as mentioned in the paper today, were the old Festival Foods store on Knoxville in Northpoint shopping center, and a greenfield site just north of Route 6 on the west side of Allen Road, behind the new Sud car dealership. I was pleased to see the sites were selected on a rational and objective basis.
But that’s not the end of the story. Next comes cost. Just because a site meets the criteria doesn’t mean that a fair price will be able to be negotiated for it. The asking price for the Festival Foods site is approximately $4 million. The Sud site is $5.50 per square foot developed (i.e., with roads, utilities, etc. built out to the property line). The Library Board will be trying to negotiate a lower price. The more they have to spend for land, the less they have to spend on construction.
The Festival Foods site is terribly overpriced. In fact, the owner of Festival Foods reportedly had been asking a little less than $2 million for the site before the library showed interest. It has certainly sat vacant long enough while other big box stores have been passing it by, searching for greener pastures (literally) farther north. Fortunately, they’re not the only site the library is considering.
This may come as a surprise to some of my readers, but I would prefer a standalone building for this project, which in this case would most likely mean a greenfield development on the Sud property. The reason is that this is a civic building, and the architecture of civic buildings is symbolic. It symbolizes the civilization of a city. When you put a library in a strip mall, it says something about your community’s values, or at least about how much your community values (a) libraries, and (b) civic architecture.
Look at the other libraries in the system. Consider the Lincoln Branch. Here, you have a Carnegie library building proudly placed in the middle of a civic square. It’s inspiring and set apart from the surrounding architecture. You know immediately that this is someplace special. It’s not a title loan place or a pizza joint. It’s a civic building. It is important. The architecture and setting reinforce that importance.
Now I realize that not every library is going to look like a Carnegie library building. That’s not my point. My point is that it’s distinguishable. The McClure branch, which is more modest architecturally, is nevertheless a distinguishable and inspiring civic building. That’s what we should be shooting for in the north end, too.
The paper says the cost of the bonds to homeowners would be “about $50 per $100,000 of assessed property value a year.” That may be, or it may be lower. Because of the way the economy is, the city may be able to get an even lower rate for the bonds; instead of $0.15 per $100 assessed value, it may only be $0.13, in which case the cost to taxpayers would only be about $43 per $100,000 of assessed property a year.
Also, it should be noted that the $35 million in bonds isn’t just for a new north branch. Only about $11 million is going toward that. The $35 million is also going to triple the size of the Lincoln branch (they’re going to build a large addition), completely remodel the Main branch (also close to $11 million), and expand the Lakeview branch as well.
*Lincoln branch picture courtesy of PeoriaIllinoisan, via his Name This Peoria Landmark blog.
isn’t Methodist looking to build next to Suds also? Seems to me it would be hard to build a grand structure next to a hospital. And if it is behind Suds how important is the design if it is not easily seen?
All the buildings in the world won’t make a difference if the library is isn’t open when I need it open like Saturday s and Sundays. Why only open till 9pm?
Septboy — Good questions. Given the way the north end of town is not laid out traditionally (on a grid system), it’s difficult to find a focal point out that way. Behind the car dealership wouldn’t be my first pick either, but there will be a road that goes back to the site (so you won’t have to go through the car dealership to get to it), it would have its own dedicated building, and would be clearly visible from Route 6. Not ideal, but better than being appended to a half-vacant strip mall.
Northpoint isn’t half vacant.
Northpoint has a couple vacancies, albeit Festival Foods is a huge vacancy.
I’ve told you a million times, I’m prone to hyperbole. 😛
Why did our Peoria Public Library Adminstrator leave a large city like Indianapolis for a much smaller community? I think I know the answer. Can someone confirm it.
This info should be a matter or public record.
Did anyone read the article in yesterday’s WSJ about Amazons new Kindle system? Won’t replace books but if Kindle takes off, you won’t see books flying off the shelves, although instead on 1000 linear feet of empty books shelves at Lakeview, I now see 1110 feet of empty space.
Has any stallwart expansion and “new” supporter noted the price of stock for Borders; down to $5+ dollars from $24- in the past 52 weeks. Barnes and Noble down to $30+ from $44 in the past 52 weeks.
The Peoria Public Library Board wants to compete with them with taxpayers dollars.
A side note – Library/City Council liason Councilman gary Sandburg paid $16 in property taxes to the library ..while I paid $271. If you don’t pay property taxes why not have “other” pay for things that certainly aren’t priorities.
Merle, libraries are no longer for books. In the old days the library would talk about how many books were checked out over any given time. Now its all about how many items were checked out. I have not seen the numbers but would guess that Peoria checks out more non book items (movies, music, art prints, ect), then they do books.
If you want to bitch about something Merle get a Brodart catalog and see what libraries will often pay up to three times the price a bookstore pays for things like fixtures and supplies. How about a cute rack that will hold about 50 childrens books for $1500.00?
The library project is good for Peoria. I however am having trouble seeing how what they have proposed is worth the $35,000,000 cost. Does Lincoln really do the numbers to justify it triple in size? Do we really need a large downtown branch? If there is going to be a large library on Knoxville do we need to enlarge or even keep the Lakeview branch?
What about smaller neighborhood libraries put in existing structures so everyone could have a chance to use the library? Should that be the goal or just to see how big a library we can have in certain areas?