Special Meeting of Trustees Redirects Library Expansion

Earlier this evening, a special meeting of the Board of the Pleasant Valley Library was convened under the leadership of Ardith Orr, Chair of the Library Expansion Committee (this committee has various names, but that one seems most appropriate).  The purpose was to consider a plan that the Committee had formulated after recent reviews of Building Expansion by outside community leaders, including two architects.

The basic elements of the plan were dictated by the perceived needs that library expansion would have to meet as enumerated by Library Director Daniela Pulice. The Library needs 75% more shelf space, true handicapped access, more electrical outlets and better lighting, storage space, a larger staff work area and space behind the circulation desk, and more comfortable seating for patrons.  We need to stay on Main Street in Pleasant Valley and remain in the Arlington School District.  In any new or reworked building, we need to visibility from the circulation and reference desks to the stacks and other public areas (excluding the meeting room).   In addition, the Library would be improved by having a meeting room 100% larger than we now have with an accordion wall that could be used to separate the room into two sections for two meetings at a time. The staff would love to have a break room, especially one with a kitchen.  The Library could use space for two more paperback racks (and enough open space to stage some events in the Library outside the meeting rooms, such as concerts or fundraisers).  Patrons have suggested that the Library needs more parking—although most of the time there is available parking a bit farther from the entrance  as well as parking on Main Street that is now underutilized.


When these needs and wants were taken into account, the committee recommended that the existing plan for replacing the current stacks wing with a new two-story wing be abandoned and that a new one-story building replace the present one.  After much discussion, the Board voted to have the committee proceed to interview architects and seek a cost analysis based on a large one-story building that would occupy most of the land on the present site.  The committee will meet again at 6:00 p.m. on July 19, but members in the meantime will begin the process of contacting architects for bids on developing sketches for the building and a contractor for expected costs of demolishing the present building and putting up a new one.  There are many details that have been considered, but it is too early to go public with plans that are still to be firmed.