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The Phoenixville Public Library is in a tight spot. Literally, the Carnegie-era library currently crams a collection of 75,000 books, CDs, and other reference materials, as well as nearly 600 programs per year into an 11,000 square foot space. The shelves are cramped and the reading areas and meeting spaces are at a premium. Few would disagree that the library needs to expand — the question facing the Library Board and the Phoenixville community is how.
For the past two years, Tom Carnavale of Carnevale Eustis Architects, Inc. has been working on a “concept” — a word as overused in this debate as the Wall Street/Main Street dichotomy in the 2008 Presidential Election. This rough design of what the library expansion could look like pushes the square footage of the library out to a total of approximately 34,000. At its current collection size, the library should be about 22,000 square feet according to the American Library Association, meaning this expansion would exceed necessity to accommodate future growth. The concept calls for a dedicated young adult library, a vastly larger children’s library, up to 35 computer workstations, and plentiful public meeting space.
In order to provide the additional 23,000 square feet, Carnivale’s design proposes extending the library out onto Second Avenue, with the southern wall butting right up against Reeves Park. Where the corner of Second Avenue and Main Street currently stands, Carnivale and the Library Board propose a cul-de-sac, bordered by the new library extension to the west, the residences on Second Avenue to the north, and Reeves Park to the south. This is a move that some local residents passionately disagree with.At a school board workshop Thursday night, locals took turns speaking for and against this plan for expansion.
“You’ll see a big wall. We’re not going to have sunsets anymore,” said Mary Ann Wilk of 181 Second Ave, which is right next door to the library. Wilk expressed concern that the perimeter of Reeves Park would be disrupted, about increased parking on Second Avenue, and about increased traffic along Park Alley. “People have garages back there. Kids ride their bikes there.” Wilk suggests the library instead start a satellite building. “I love the library. I worked there, my sisters and my mother worked there. They’ve just outgrown their space. It needs a different configuration. Put a satellite on the North Side,” she suggested.
Michael Kammerdiener of 129 Washington Ave. agrees. “Stop this ill-conceived, short-sighted project before it becomes an embarrassment for the Borough of Phoenixville,” he wrote in a letter to the editor in the June 18th edition of The Phoenix. In an interview, Kammerdiener said that the Carnegie library and Reeves Park are community treasures that will be ruined by this expansion. “The windows are going to be covered over and the wall will not be seen from the outside. There are options that the Library Board has to build on other properties. They have no parking plan and no rationalization for blocking a major thoroughfare across the borough. What other options have they considered?”
John Kelley, executive director of the library, argues that building a satellite is not feasible due to staffing and operations costs. In the current plan, the expanded building would operate with the same number of staff. As for why the library can’t just find a new building, Adam Deveney, Secretary of the Library Foundation Board, explained that this would require the library to lease or purchase its own property and then build. The current building is owned by the Phoenixville Area School District and 0.6 percent of the 2009-2010 PASD budget ($494,200) goes to the public library. “The director of the central library is not going to fund a new building. We can’t afford the debt,” Deveney said.
“Vacating the Carnegie library voids our contract. We’d lose our funding and the Phoenixville branch would close,” said Library Board President Susan Meadows.
Building up is not an option, explained Kelley and Carnavale, because the century-old structures cannot support additional levels. Building backwards, along Second Avenue, would require purchasing the 100 block and taking away homes, which the library wants to avoid. Therefore, their best option for expansion is to build across Second Avenue on the portion between Main and B streets.
“There’s this perception that we’re railroading this project, but we’re willing to work with the community,” said Meadows. Indeed, Deveney and Carnavale have held somewhere between 44 and 60 meetings over the past two years, including up to 12 informal coffee sessions to discuss the expansion project with Phoenixville residents.
According to Deveney, the foundation board mailed invitations to neighbors and advertised meetings on Phantom TV, as well as on the library website. “We never had more than 20 people,” he said.
Karen Johns of 171 Second Ave. was one of the residents who attended those meetings. “We went to those meetings at the library and begged them to consider alternatives,” Johns said. “There were no concessions.”
Concerns about the expansion plans apart from park aesthetics include traffic, expenses to the taxpayer, and increased parking issues.
Deveney and Carnivale paid an independent contractor, John M. Schick of Rettew, to complete a Traffic Impact Analysis, projecting what traffic levels would look like on streets surrounding the library, assuming the expansion takes out a block of Second Avenue and that the Gay Street Bridge is still closed. There are certainly traffic increases, but all fall “within acceptable limits,” according to the study, meaning there should be no traffic jams, and an acceptable level of noise. Additionally, Carnavale Eustis received letters from both the police and fire departments stating that the library extension would not interrupt emergency services to the neighborhood.
Some of the more crucial numbers from the traffic study include the corner of Main Street and First Avenue, which may jump from 48 cars during morning rush hour to 132 cars and from 89 in the afternoon to 160; the corner of First Avenue and Starr Street, which will jump from 37 in the morning and 30 in the afternoon to 124 in the morning and 106 in the afternoon; Third Avenue and Main Street, which goes from 79/92 to 102/154; and Third Avenue and Starr Street, which could go from 34/64 to 68/162.
Regarding taxes, at the present time, the expansion should incur no cost to the taxpayer, according to Deveney. Funding for this project, which Deveney projects will cost $6.5 million to build and another $2 million to furnish, will be covered by an assortment of private foundations and donors as well as local, regional, and national grants. One example is Senator Andy Dinniman, who has secured an RCAP grant of $450,000 for the project. The only cost to the taxpayer that Deveney anticipates is the utilities. “We expect increased utility costs, but we hope to reduce those by refurbishing with newer, more efficient equipment,” Deveney said.
Then there’s parking. Deveney and Carnavale believe that sufficient parking will be found along First and Third Avenues and other adjoining streets. “Second Avenue is already a parking lot for the library,” Johns said. “By closing Second Avenue, it’ll drive the parking problem further into the town. You can’t expect a small neighborhood to absorb these problems.”
On Thursday, June 25 at 7 p.m. in the Phoenixville Area High School auditorium, the school board plans to vote on whether or not to purchase the portion of Second Avenue between Main and B streets for the price of $1.00 from the Borough of Phoenixville, conditional upon future approvals set by the planning commission, zoning board and other committees. Voting for the purchase means that the library board and Carnavale’s firm can hone in on fund raising and working with the public to make revisions to the current concept. A vote of ‘no,’ according to Carnavale, will set any library expansion back by two years.
Filed under: Newspaper articles | Tagged: The Phoenix
