The City of Newcastle will someday boast a World Class Transit Center on the shores of Lake Boren. Someday.
One of the components of Transit Center World Classdom has to be a Library located nearby. Weary commuters arriving back from work can take an escalator underground. From there they board the moving walkway that ambles through damp and dark tunnels to the sub basement of the library.
Then all they need to do is swipe their library card and enter a password (********* is what I use) and a book plummets down a chute. They slip the book into their rolling computer bag and head for home.
Without a library the transit center would just be a bus stop. For example right now in ‘downtown’ Newcastle that’s what it is – a bus stop.
Back in the old days when teachers were allowed to teach kids how to read a lot of us actually learned. We can still read stuff like books and blogs. That’s why we need libraries. There’s a correlation between folks who work and folks who read. This is why commuters want access to the library on their way home. It all fits together.
Newcastle embarked on a quest to get a branch library and in the King County Library System many years ago. Today there are almost 50 locations in the KCLS system. It’s a large outfit. Recently the Renton Library decided to join up. KCLS has survived the blow well and even managed to show a fake smile.
Renton is kind of a funny town. It’s part of the Greater Newcastle Metropolitan Area but has exercised some kind of independence for most of its existence. For example the street numbering system that’s worked for Seattle and most of the rest of King County was not acceptable to Renton. They changed it around 40 years ago and it makes finding addresses in Renton difficult. Fortunately very few of us want to find anything in Renton so it’s just a minor annoyance.
The GPS tong has gotten most of the Renton streets programmed in. Here’s a warning: if you’ve never been to Renton be sure to bring your GPS so you don’t get lost.
Anyway, they also put up their own “public library” in downtown Renton. It is a unique structure in that it spans the Cedar River. The floor of the library is essentially a bridge. Not a floating bridge like I-90, but in very wet weather it seems to be near floating.
Having a special library in Renton was awkward because most of us think its all part of the King County Library. Now it is.
Seattle has a separate library with branches and lots of books. They also have an agreement with KCLS to return books that belong to each other. If a person checks out a book from the Seattle library and drops it off with KCLS it gets returned to the correct Seattle branch. And vice versa.
The problem with that exchange is that many years ago when it was first dreamed up the Seattle library was much larger. They only had to send a few occasional books to KCLS. Now the King County Library System is very much larger and the cost of returning books is substantially higher for poor old Seattle. Boohoo.
Back to the Newcastle Library. During the planning stage the city wondered if they could also include a City Hall in the same structure. Right now the City Hall is located in the front of a factory. The KCLS folks thought that was OK and agreed. Mainly because that meant they could share cost of construction. Gotta have a goal. This caused a rework of the plan.
The KCLS Branch in Burien occupies the same structure as the Burien City Hall. It’s not unheard of. Take a look. It’s on the web. Try www.dumb.idea... Or something.
Well that wasn’t enough for Newcastle. Next they wanted some low income housing units in there as well. Maybe 80 or 90. Along with a carwash, vitamin store, and local airport. Why not?
Then they removed the City Hall from the plan. I think they decided sharing a factory building would be better than sharing low income housing.
Anyway, all this required a lot of plan revisions and working with several other entities to reach agreements on what it should look like. This is not a fast process. The world circled the sun a number of times before they even had a sketch ready.
Then things came unglued and revised again. Economic realities forced cutbacks on what could be included and what should be left out. The airport was the first to fly out of the plan. Observers saw things going that way and suggested maybe the original library plan should once again be an option. The City Council quietly approved a zoning change that would allow the library to go it alone.
People over at the King County Library System can read. It’s a skill many of them have. They can also add. Maybe half have that skill. The upshot is that the library will now be built as a single use structure. Over a parking garage. As part of the agreement the folks who want to build the 80 unit low income housing are now free to make their own plans and construction schedule. Except that if they fail to begin by an undisclosed date the library will then be free to select a new partner for the remaining area.
Here’s my thought: it’s only one acre! Once you have a library and a few shrubs there’s not much room left for anything else. So don’t look for more junk on that lot. Besides, the city council has several more meetings before construction begins so who knows what they’ll come up with?
Al
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