Library selects familiar site for new North Beach branch

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August 18, 11:54 PM

by Tony Long, North Beach Examiner

 

 

Now the triangle is back. San Francisco Public Library officials (with Rec and Park cheering them on) selected the old battleground as their preferred site for the new North Beach branch library. Representatives for both agencies defended the choice in front of a lively gathering of neighborhood activists, gadflies and most of the District 3 supervisorial candidates on Monday night at Sts. Peter and Paul Church.

The plan was met with the usual North Beach blend of exuberance, suspicion and hostility.

Jill Bourne, the deputy city librarian, said that while the triangle site was something of a compromise -- it's the best place for the library while Rec and Park proceeds with the simultaneous renovation of the adjoining playground -- the proposed two-story structure fulfills all the major needs for a state-of-the-art library.

The square footage of public space will increase dramatically, Bourne said, from the current 5,200 square feet to around 8,500 square feet. That will allow the library to designate specific areas for children, teens and adults, as well as providing space for a large community room. Keeping all the publicly-accessible facilities on the ground floor will also minimize staffing needs and save a little dough. Computer capacity will also increase and Wi-Fi capability will let the laptop crowd do their surfing among the stacks.

Another reason the triangle site makes sense, Bourne said, is that the current library can remain open and fully functional during construction. Seeing as how the financial ducks are not yet in a row, guaranteeing that there will be no disruption of library service is an important factor.

Putting the new library on the triangle would necessarily involve closing the short block of Mason Street between Lombard and Columbus, and that's where a lot of Monday night's opposition came from. Despite assurances from traffic consultant Jeff Tumlin that closing the street to connect the triangle to the park represented only "a mild redistribution of traffic," opponents (a few who live north of the park on Mason) were unconvinced.

Other opponents of the plan, who favor renovating the existing library and perhaps expanding into the adjoining children's playground, or "tot lot," argue that the cost of building an entirely new structure will be prohibitive and is fiscally imprudent. They also fear that the battle that's sure to erupt around the closing of Mason Street will only delay the project even further.

In any case, now that the site for a new branch library has been chosen, the process continues. Both the Library Commission and Rec and Park must officially approve the plan, after which it will be submitted for an environmental review. At that point, the architects (Leddy Maytum Stacy, in this case) begin their design work in earnest, although Marsha Maytum said Monday that they've already got a pretty good idea of where they're going, and they're excited by it.

That, for me, is the key. If Maytum's excitement is well founded -- and the twinkle in her eye suggested it might be -- then siting the library on that very prominent corner could be a master stroke. If the building turns out to be just another example of uninspired contemporary architecture, then we could have accomplished the same thing by giving Brian O'Flynn his stupid condominium project back in ought-four.

Along the way there will be opportunities for the public to continue weighing in. Despite one prediction that the EIR process shouldn't take more than a year to complete ("It's pretty simple," the guy said), I've lived here too long to buy that. Nothing is simple in San Francisco. We might all be dead before this new library is ever built, but at least our kids should be able to enjoy it.

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