davis_square | Did anyone here go to last night's West Branch Library redevelopment meeting?

I went to the meeting, and while I won't pretend to be an unbiased party I can report my impressions. The meeting started with the design team presenting the current plans developed after a series of community meetings starting in June 2015. These include significant updates to the interior of the historic building, the addition of an accessible entrance / lobby on the right side of the building, the addition of a programmable space that could be used for community meetings after hours to the back right corner of the lot, the creation of a new lawn area where much of the service drive on the left and back of the lot are now, and changes to the front garden to create a more open, plaza-like space.

I think it would be fair to say that most people (who spoke, anyway) were opposed to significant changes to the garden in the front of the library, which has a lot of aesthetic value. The design team repeated indicated that some changes to the front are necessary to provide an accessible entrance to the library, but I hope that other attendees of the meeting would agree that the consensus of the room was to preserve as much of the front garden as possible, including as many trees as possible. I think (hope) that the city got this point loud and clear.

In addition, there was (unsurprisingly) no significant opposition that I perceived anyway to improvements to the interior of the historic building, including moving the children's room to the 2nd floor, moving the bulk of the stacks to the lower level (and adding a flexible maker space to the lower level), and restoring the main floor to its historic configuration as reading / quiet space.

The most contentious issue was the addition to the back right corner of the lot. While based on the plans the total green space on the lot would not change (the back service lawn lost to the addition is replaced by removing the asphalt on the back part of the service drive and adding a lawn), the lot area covered by buildings would obviously increase, and some direct abutters would be negatively impacted by that. Also, there the addition in the back would necessitate the removal of a 100-year-old Norway Maple, which was also contentious with some abutters (although a compromise plan with a smaller addition was also presented that could result in preserving the Norway Maple -- although given the problems with Norway maples I personally am not particularly in favor of that, I do understand the value of a large mature tree). However, many people also spoke passionately in favor of the addition, citing the need for programmable space in the library, the need for accessible community space for public meetings, and the benefits to library services that would occur from separating out programs and activities from stacks and quiet reading areas.

In the end nothing was finalized. The next step discussed was for the city to conduct another survey to gauge the community's values and desires, particularly with regard to the addition/community space and the front garden. Ultimately, due to the fact that the plan needs a variance from the Zoning Board of Appeals, it is unlikely that anything strongly opposed by the direct abutters will go forward, as the ZBA weighs abutters opinions very heavily (for legal reasons, as I understand it). So it was not clear to me what will happen after the survey is conducted.

I'm surprised that a city project on city property would even be subject to the Zoning Board of Appeals.

This may be a stupid question, and I haven't looked at the plans, but is there any reason they aren't exploring the additional space be added to the back side where the parking lot is now, and keep the garden, vs take out the garden, then create new green space where the parking lot is? I imagine there must a structural reason why, but it feels like it makes more sense to keep the established green space and use the paved space if possible... ?

There was some discussion of this. The issue is that the back left corner of the lot (where the parking lot is now) is very tight for a variety of reasons: the adjacent building has an egress onto the driveway that needs to be preserved, and the building on that side is built right to the lot line so if the library expanded on that side there would be a blank wall right in front of those abutters windows. Also, the existing building is not centered on the lot, so there is more space on the right side than the left.

On top of that, I think that the existing green space in the back and right side of the building (as opposed to in the front) was seen by the design team (and many at the meeting, including me, but not everyone) as pretty low value and low quality -- so there is not much detriment to replacing it with presumably higher quality green space where there is now asphalt.

Finally, there are apparently legal issues with the renovation of historic buildings that make expanding straight back problematic. At least according to what I was told, the standards for renovations of historic buildings generally speaking require that the new additions be architecturally distinct from the existing structure to preserve the historic integrity of the registered building as much as possible. This is much harder to achieve if the building were extended to the rear, which would require removing the rear facade. An addition to the side, therefore, is apparently much more likely to get approval from the various historic commissions that need to approve the plans (I am not an expert, this is just my take-away from what was said at the meeting). Relatedly, the goal of adding an accessible entrance is to make the accessible entrance on equal footing with the main entrance, which could be a hard standard to meet if the main accessible entrance were a back door.

So I think this was looked at in some depth and determined to be infeasible for various reasons.

thank you, that's a really helpful answer! I figured there was a good reason, but thought i'd throw out my totally non asked for and non professional question. :)

Thanks so much for the summary!

Yes, thanks so much for your summary and comments! This is very informative.

"..and some direct abutters would be negatively impacted by that."

How would they be negatively affected? I have an ugly house next to mine that I have to look at but I accept that as part of living in a dense urban town.

Did anyone here go to last night's West Branch Library redevelopment meeting?

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