Library director doesn’t want bus depot for a neighbor

A bus depot can be too close to a library, said Bob Pasicznyuk, the city's new library director.

Such proximity - seen by some as a plus for one of three proposed sites for a new $45 million library - can turn the library into the bus depot's waiting room or worse, said the library director.

“I don't mind it being in the vicinity; I just want some distance,” Pasicznyuk said. “(The bus depot) was almost linked at the hip before. … What I don't want to do is just be right next door and be the waiting area for it.”

This kind of sentiment is puzzling to some regulars who depend on the city's bus system and love to go to the library.

“I don't see anything wrong” with bus patrons who want to spend time at the library rather than wait in the depot for their city bus to arrive, said 15-year-old Matt McMurrin.

McMurrin, 15, of 440 West Post Rd. NW, said he has friends who ride the bus just to go to the library.

Cara Dietrich, 25, of 212 Wesley Dr. NW, said the city bus is one “community resource” to take people to a second community resource, the library.

“The bus actually brings more people to the library, and I don't think that's a bad thing,” Dietrich said.

All this matters because the city is proposing to build a new library and a new Intermodal Transit Facility bus depot, and the proximity of the two has factored in the debate over where to put the library. City Council member Tom Podzimek, for instance, often has talked about building public projects near one another so they can share parking lots.

This is a plus for one of the three proposed library sites - the one not supported by the library board - that now houses TrueNorth across Fourth Avenue SE from Greene Square Park. The site is adjacent to the proposed site for the new Intermodal Transit Facility bus depot.

The library's Pasicznyuk isn't alone in wanting to make sure a new library and a new bus depot aren't next to each other. Council member Chuck Wieneke feels the same way.

Wieneke and Pasicznyuk see it as a “safety” issue. When asked to elaborate, both talk of out-of-towners. Four intercity buses a day stop in Cedar Rapids.

To that, Pasicznyuk throws in “transients and the homeless” as those of concern, and he recalls his own stop years ago at the St. Louis bus depot when he was approached by drug dealers and a prostitute.

“I'm not saying we have that issue here,” he said, “but that (depot) waiting-room environment has a little different feel to it than people just using the transportation system to get to the library, which I think is wonderful.”

Pasicznyuk said some have suggested that the library is there for the poor, but he said the library should be for everybody. Downtown libraries perceived as catering mostly to the homeless can come to be seen as unsafe, he said.

Bus-rider and library-user Jason Hayes, 34, said concerns about bus patrons as library users can leave the impression that people who ride the bus “aren't as high-class” as those who drive a car.

“Because I don't have a car or a house doesn't mean I don't read,” said Hayes, a halfway-house resident. “The library is for the smallest kids to the oldest people, and how they get there shouldn't matter.”