A green library
Progressive Pensacola sat down with Pensacola City Councilman Larry B. Johnson this morning to get his thoughts on how to use the $6 million the City has budgeted for a new library.
The bottom line: Councilman Johnson wants to build a green, LEED-certified library that will serve as “another piece of the puzzle to creating a vibrant downtown Pensacola.”
Mr. Johnson proposes using land at Palafox and Gregory Streets, now occupied by an underutilised City-owned parking lot. The land is about two blocks from the current library site.
“That way it’s still on the west side of Palafox,” he says, addressing concerns of some Council members who have expressed opposition to the idea of moving the library too far eastward, “and it’s right there next to the Martin Luther King plaza. I would like to propose naming the new library for Martin Luther King, Jr. I’ve got a picture of Dr. King in my office. I’ve been to his home, his church, the Lorraine Motel. The importance that Dr. King has had to my life… I want to express that. And it would maybe address Mr. [Leroy] Boyd’s concerns about Dr. King not being properly recognised in our community.”
“I envision a state-of-the-art green library, with a coffee shop on the ground floor, where people that live, work, and play in the area can come by and enjoy a book and a cup of coffee,” Councilman Johnson explains. “I definitely want this building to be green — and really any City buildings we build from here on out.” When asked what to do with the existing library building, he advocates preservation. “The existing library, that’s a building with great 50’s architecture… the [adjacent, abandoned] fire station too… we own these buildings, you and I and the citizens, they’re bought and paid for. I would propose that we use those buildings as an incentive to attract tech companies to locate in downtown Pensacola. This could be a win-win on many levels.”
Councilman Johnson, who was recently appointed vice-chair of Council’s Enterprise Operations committee, which oversees the library system, says he has not spoken to other members of Council about it, aside from a brief mention at a public orientation session last month. “I’m very conscious of Sunshine laws,” he says. Florida’s Sunshine laws bar public officials from having private discussions with other officials about public business, mandating that business be discussed only at public, advertised meetings. “I’ll likely bring this up at Tuesday’s meeting of the Enterprise Operations committee.”
While “green” building pactices often have a slightly higher initial cost, with an average increased building cost of $2.43 per square foot, the higher outlay is usually mitigated fairly quickly as a result of reduced operating costs.1
Properly-funded, strong libraries and green, sustainable building practices are hallmarks of progressive communities, and Progressive Pensacola emphatically endorses Councilman Johnson’s idea. Let’s see what we make happen.
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Sounds like a terrific plan, and I’m glad Councilman Johnson is so on-the-ball with this. He better shore up his support with the Friends of the Library quick.
Don’t sweat the Friends of the Library crowd. They’ll all be thrilled to have new talent on the Council who read books and think libraries are important. Get the University of West Florida’s Construction Program involved and learn from their BEST (Build*Educate*Sustain*Technology) House demonstration project. One thought – who says we can only build a measly $6 million library? We may not be able to afford a megabucks Robert Stern-designed 300,000 square foot library like they have in Jacksonville but we deserve better than a downtown “branch” library. The CRA can issue a bond for up to $40 million. Let the Pelicans build their own ballpark and UWF their own Executive Office Space/Conference Center (over near the Technology Park). Put some real money into the library to make it the best in Northwest Florida.
Misplaced priorities
Pensacola plans to spend $6 million dollars to build a new main library and $15-20 million on a baseball stadium.
That says something about the character of our community. We will not pay for a first class public library system, but we will provide financial support for a privately owned baseball team.
The proposed new downtown library will not be the “main library.” It will be a branch. A new main library will be built in a central location. (I’ve heard Nine Mile Road bandied about, but can’t recall the projected construction cost offhand.) And let’s not forget the construction of the new Tryon branch library on Langley.
If you want to talk about the cost of a “first class public library system,” you should include each of these capital projects, plus the annual operating expenses. Apples to apples, professor.
Excellent plan! Except for the part about preserving the current building; if it was cheap to fix we woudn’t have the discussion about a new building, would we? May I suggest that Mr. Johnson arranges for a visit inside the library to see the state it’s in? Perhaps he should take the other Council members with him, too.
Re: Joe@17:59, I keep hearing about moving the library headquarters to a “central” location, and I can’t understand what is central about Nine Mile Rd. All cities I’ve ever been to have the library HQs in downtown — that’s the center of governmental activity, financial activity, entertainment activity, and, more on point, *cultural* activity. I can’t fathom where they’ve got the idea of putting the main library not only outside the downtown area, but outside the city limits!
Well, I guess the idea is it’d be more central to the county as a whole, for administrative and distribution purposes. (The county, last I heard, is still planning to take over the system one of these days.) The downtown branch would remain the ’showcase’ branch.
Joe, of course the location on Nine Mile Rd. is central geographically, but since when does that count? I say, let them move all the county administration to Nine Mile Rd and let’s use 221 Palafox Place for the library!
The library may very well be in poor condition because the city owns it and doesn’t maintain the property it owns.
Fire stations with mold, esp building still damaged in 2004, and the historic building on Palafox and Cervantes that the state issued a letter as the city was practicing demolition by neglect.
Thankfully the city sold the building and it has been restored .
Mr. Elebash:
Your concerns about the costs of the new library vs the CMP are touching, but the library has been in bad shape since I moved here in 1997, yet I don’t recall hearing you expressing any concerns about it prior to now. Anything to defeat the CMP, eh ?
I think that says more about your character than it does the community’s
Library? The building with that sign on the building that looks like a homeless shelter for men every morning? I wouldn’t go in there, much less let my child go there .