Director predicts users will love 'warm,' 'contemporary' library design

So what do you think of it?

That will be the oft-asked question here today as residents weigh in on Thursday's much-anticipated unveiling of the exterior design of the city's new downtown library, a design the city's library board late Thursday afternoon approved with beaming unanimity.

“It's going to be pretty spectacular,” said Susan McDermott, one of two board members on the library design team, at a break in the board's meeting. “I think (residents) are going to see a fabulous new building that accommodates our community needs better than we ever had before.”

The building's architect, OPN Architects Inc. of Cedar Rapids, and project manager Ryan Companies US Inc. comprised the building design team along with Library Director Bob Pasicznyuk and library board members McDermott and Phyllis Fleming.

Pasicznyuk on Thursday said the library's exterior design is intended to be “warm and welcoming” with “a contemporary feel.”

“We were trying to hit both notes,” he said. “Some buildings are so contemporary that they are little bit standoffish. We wanted you to feel like you could sink into this place and at the same time we wanted to be a 21st-century library.”

Funding for the $49.7-million project is well in hand - a mix of federal disaster money, state I-JOBS funds, local-option sales tax revenue and private donations, some of which are to come.

The building is going up across from Greene Square Park where TrueNorth Companies Inc. now occupies a building, which will be demolished to make way for the new library. TrueNorth is renovating and moving to the former, flood-damaged library on First Street SE, a move expected in October. Pasicznyuk said most of the new library's footprint will sit in what is a parking lot behind TrueNorth's building, and the hope is construction might begin before TrueNorth moves, he said.

The opening of the new library is set for July 2013 at the latest. An earlier opening date of December 2012, Pasicznyuk said, went by the way because of the time it has taken to obtain the site.

The new library will be 94,000 square feet in size, or 8,000 square feet larger than the former, flood-damaged library on First Street SE, built in 1985. The front door of the new library will sit three feet above the high-water mark of the 2008 flood.

The building is predominately a two-story one, with the first floor mostly glass. What Pasicznyuk called the building's “signature” feature is a 200-seat auditorium that will take up the second and a third flood on the west end of the building. The third floor will lead to a parklike, “green” roof that will be available for use while it helps prevent rainwater runoff.

The library director said he already is being asked if the roof will be available for weddings, and his answer, “as many as we can get,” he said.

Much of the building will be covered in cement-based panels of charcoal gray with the exterior of the auditorium clad in a panels of silver gray. The building's colors will have accents of white and red.

“Color schemes are always controversial,” McDermott said.

She called the gray/silver/white/red scheme “very classic,” and said the red accents “really break up the look of the building and add some liveliness.”

Pasicznyuk suspected somebody might say, “'I like green. I wish it were green.' ... I think matters of taste are always involved,” he said.

Even so, he Pasicznyuk said he expected most to say, “Gosh, it's the neatest library I've seen forever.”

He predicted that the library, once built, will attract the attention of a national library publication that picks the best new libraries in the nation each year.

“I'd be startled if we're not one of them,” the library director said.

The library also will have a large skylight, an expanded children's area and a cafe with its own drive-up window. Pieces of limestone from the flood-damaged exterior of the old library and bricks from the demolished Sinclair packing plant will be used at spots inside the new library.

In addition, the new library will have five times as many parking spaces as the old library, with about 40 on site, 65 on the street outside and another 100 to 125 spots dedicated in the city parking ramp next door. A skywalk will connect the ramp to the library.

Pasicznyuk said patrons will be able to enter from the front or rear of building as well as from the skywalk.

The plan is to incorporate features into the building to earn at least a gold standard of certification in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design or LEED. One of those features is a geothermal system for heating and cooling, and Pasicznyuk said the city is now taking borings to see if such a system can be put in place.

The total library cost is now $49.7 million, up from about $45 million because the purchase of land is $4 million more than the initial budget anticipated. Some of the costs include about $9 million for contents, $7.5 million for land and $5 million for preconstruction design, engineering and management. Actual construction is estimated to cost $25 million and will take about 20 months once it starts.