Library board plans for free parking at new library; will be great venue for your book club, library director promises

CEDAR RAPIDS - Parking for library patrons at the city's coming new public library across from Greene Square Park will be free under a plan approved Thursday by the library board and headed to the City Council for its approval.

Bob Pasicznyuk, library director, reminded the library board that 85 percent of library users surveyed about a new library cited parking problems at the former library as one of the things they wanted to see remedied in a new facility. The library board is well aware of the fact.

Pasicznyuk said the library's parking plan would include 65 on-street parking spaces in front, on one side and in the rear of the library, a lot on the library site for 40 vehicles and 125 spaces in the Fourth Avenue Parkade connected by skywalk over railroad tracks to the new library's second floor.

“What I like is it provides something for everybody,” he said. Patrons, he said, can choose to park on the street, in the small lot or in the ramp depending on what's available.

Signage in the parking ramp will designate one entire floor of the ramp for library patrons, though non-patrons will be able to park on the floor or at the other locations as well. Library patrons will use library cards to plug new, high-tech meters for free parking while non-patrons will pay with credit or debit cards.

Pasicznyuk and Susan Corrigan, the library board president, said they would recommend to the City Council that library patrons receive two hours of free parking when they plug meters with their library cards.

The library director said the plan for the new library now calls for a building of about 95,000 square feet, down about 10,000 square feet from an earlier estimate of 105,000 square feet. About 3,000 square feet in the building will house an early childhood literacy program, the Community Early Learning Institute, in a collaborative effort with the library.

Bits and pieces of the library board's ideas for the new library surfaced during Thursday's meeting: No shelving will be taller than 66 inches high so there are no unreachable top shelves and so the library will have a more open feel. A piece of Greene Square Park across Fourth Avenue SE from the library will be dug up to allow the installation of a geothermal heating and cooling system for the library. And Pasicznyuk said the library will include special features – perhaps a fireplace, Corrigan suggested – so people will say, “I wouldn't want to hold my book club any place else.”

Construction on the new library is expected to be complete in December 2012.