MoCo exec Ike Leggett wants patrons of Silver Spring’s planned library to pull into the Wayne Avenue garage. Some residents want to park in a garage built beneath the Fenton Village project. Others say, “Get off your fat ass and walk there.”
The debate, rekindled Tuesday night at a pubic meeting in ye olde library, left unanswered the multimillion-dollar question: Just what the hell is this new library supposed to look like?
If Leggett gets his wish, it’ll be a five-story, 63,000 square-foot building at the corner of Wayne Avenue and Fenton Street (below), with a pedestrian bridge connecting it with upper levels of the parking garage across the street. The bridge would protect visitors from the elements and traffic hazards, David Dise, with the department of general services, told about 75 people at the meeting.
MoCo exec Ike Leggett's dream library
Total cost for Leggett’s plan: $58.4 million cash money.
Silver Spring’s huddled masses yearning to read free had different ideas. Many residents at the meeting opted instead for a four-story, 63,000 square-foot library on Fenton near Bonifant Street (below), with some form of on-site, underground parking — even if that garage meant parking for handicapped visitors only. Total cost for that sort of gig: 78.7 million tax dollars.
Populist library design
But digging a garage beneath the new library won’t be easy or cheap, Dise explained. An adjacent apartment building on the site would require some of that underground real estate for its own parking needs, but that residential project is at least four years in the making. Dise said. Translation: The county would have to foot the bill for blasting through bedrock until the residential real-estate market gets its shit together.
In Leggett’s alternative, library patrons would make use of existing garage space, knocking time and money off the building’s construction, Dise told the audience. Leggett’s model also gives the residential project a larger footprint, and allows it to build underground parking without hitting up the county for some subterranean action.
Still, some residents were stuck on a library on Fenton and Bonifant, though not because the plan offered on-site parking. For them, it was all about placement of the residential project. With the four-story library near Bonifant, a proposed 13-story, 143-foot-tall apartment building would sit next to the similarly sized Crescent condominium on Wayne. That arrangement worked better with Fenton Village’s short profile, one Lofts 24 resident argued.
The library near Bonifant also would encourage more people to visit Fenton Village businesses, Karen Roper, with the East Silver Spring Citizens Association, suggested. If a pedestrian footbridge were to connect the Wayne Avenue garage directly with the library, as Leggett proposes, it would create a “hamster-like existence” for library visitors, who would bypass any street-level activity, another resident quipped.
That’s not to say that no one showed Leggett’s plan any love. Jon Lourie, an architect and chair of Silver Spring’s urban-district advisory committee, said the new library should be built at a major intersection, as Leggett recommends. A civic building on Wayne also would link the Downtown Silver Spring shopping center with Fenton Village, he said.
So what’s MoCo to do now? The county council’s human services committee takes a whack at the plans Thursday morning, and will pitch its own recommendations to Leggett soon.
Lead photo: Parker Hamilton, chief of the county’s libraries department, spells out some planning details at Tuesday night’s meeting. Credit: J. Deseo/SSP.
Thumbnail image courtesy of Flickr user FaceMePls.
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The $20 million difference between the two plans is what, I think, is driving Leggett’s decision.
In his preferred option, patrons driving to the library will use the Wayne Ave Garage & pedestrian air-bridge over Wayne Ave to enter the library. However, other patrons may arrive by foot or by transit. There will be a street entrance, via escalator, from Fenton St. at the site of the proposed Purple Line station.
I think having the Purple Line station there will give Fenton Village some needed foot traffic. There will is also planned new retail on Bonifant St (under the residential bldg) which will also morph foot traffic towards Fenton Village.
Mr Leggett, and a lot of people in favor with the current court jester, have the idea that Montgomery County — or at least parts of it — are to be tuned to the psychology of gregarious people, and tuned to exclude those who aren’t gregarious, or “crowding-seeking”.
The whole concept of “open, airy, accessible” has been replaced by “cramped, restricted, doomed to rapid decay to squalor”.
You just watch. There’s a certain camp of the New Urbanists who are determined to turn every place possible into a beehive. We have to fight them at every turn, or they will be turning essential public facilities into nothing more than a Habitrail Hamster Hamlet, intolerable excrescences of extremism in service to the exclusion of the sort of people who can even stand single-family detached residential housing. Ever see any of those weird old movies about “Attack of the Mole Men” where the underground invaders are seen all feeling their way down their subterranean corridors? That is what they want for is, I fear. No, let’s have a nice open design that is accessible be car, by Metro, by bus, and by walking. But let’s make sure that the folks who want us to live in hives and tunnels don’t turn it into a Raw Aesthetic and Experiential Horror for those of us who want to be Human rather than Mole Men.
The argument that you need underground parking if you don’t have the bridge option is fallacious. People who’d drive there would use the elevator in the parking garage and cross the street. Let’s not let this red herring hold up the Library we all want.
As someone who has, for the past 10 years, been a part of citizens’ groups advocating for a new library, I can say that in numerous outreach sessions, polls, and surveys of library users, the issue of parking — safe, convenient, and accessible — has been a recurring, major concern. The issue is not a red herring.
Kathlin Smith is absolutely correct. There must be adequate parking or the library won’t be used to its potential. While some people may live near the site, the new library will serve a large area beyond easy walking distance for most people. The Purple Line and Ride would not be viable alternatives to driving for most of these people.
How is a huge parking lot immediatley adjacent to the proposed Library not “safe, convenient, and accessible”? There are a lot of competing concerns besides being able to pull into the underbelly of the building like a descent public space with out an uninviting Library overhang, not having Bonifant overshadowed by a 12 story building, and not having the train tracks right infront of the Library entrance, just to name a few. If the county stalls the project because it can’t afford the underground parking or we’re forced to do a version the community clearly does not favor, how exactly will the Library be used to its potential?
Why isn’t the Wayne Avenue garage considered adequate parking? Are people so lazy that they can’t walk through a foot bridge linking the library and the parking garage? A library is not going to encourage people to visit Fenton village. Having good places to shop and eat are the major factors that will encourage people to the area.
Allow me to drop my two cents:
I favor the populist choice that places the library on Fenton and Bonifant, and the residential high rise on Wayne. Not because I want (or need) on-site parking, but because that arrangement of buildings makes more sense to me in an urban setting.
There did seem to be a few people at Tuesday’s meeting who felt the same way: Put the library near Bonifant, even without the on-site parking.
The problem is this: David Dise, with the department of general services, insists that underground parking still must be constructed in that scenario, if only to accommodate the residential building.
So let me throw this out there: If some are willing to go with limited parking at a Bonifant St library, then why not limit on-site parking at the residential project, too? These rental apartments will be across the street from the Wayne Ave garage, two blocks from a Metro station, and right above a Purple Line station. How much parking do the prospective tenants really need?
I say put the library on Bonifant, screw the underground parking.
Jennifer,
That’s a great idea. If a private developer wants to build a bridge, then go for it. The county shouldn’t have to foot the bill for a developers garage since market forces are in theory guiding the build-out of the residential portion. If the residential tower is on Bonifant, wouldn’t underground parking need to be built anyway? What am I missing?
It would be impossible for Bonifant to be overshadowed by the proposed 12-story apartment/condo building since we are in the northern hemisphere. The shadow of the building would be cast to the north and over the library building. Bonifant St and that side of the 12-story building will be in full sun all day unless/until a tall building is built across Bonifant.
tj — the Wayne Avenue garage is adequate, and a fine option as long as there is a pedestrian bridge.
Thayer-D wrote:
You’re right. Underground parking must be built, whether the residential building is on Wayne or Bonifant.
The trick is, a residential building on Bonifant would have a bigger footprint. That is, the underground garage can sit completely beneath that building.
With the residential building on Wayne, the footprint is smaller. It would need to reach beneath the library to accommodate residential parking, even if the library has no on-site parking.
I was evidently a bit overwrought and overly wordy and my point was missed.
Footbridges from adjacent parking tend to be crime magnets. Install a chokepoint and the chokepoint controllers will place themselves there. Even “Billy Goat Gruff” had problems with that, if you remember that children’s story.
Certain footbridges that do not have a lot of foot traffic or are in isolated areas tend to crime magnets (eg- forest glen footbridge). The proposed footbridge will provide a significant amount of foot traffic in a very visible area. If people do not feel safe taking the footbridge, there is the option of going street level and walking across the street but I don’t believe that crime will be an issue with the footbridge. I assume that the footbridge leads directly into the library and will be closed to pedestrian traffic when the library is closed but I could be wrong.
Have the designers of the library project considered automated robotic parking? Compared to traditional multi-level parking, automated multi-level parking provides 2 to 4 times the density. Taking the land and construction savings in consideration, automated parking may turn out to be less expensive and a lot more efficient than traditional parking. The more spaces that are needed, the more cost effective the system becomes. It could be a perfect solution, considering that it could provide parking for the adjacent residential building.
Editor’s note: Peter Maurer is CEO of areaCo, which produces automated parking gear. His comment has been edited. — JD (Dec 9, 2008)
Robots + cars = one fucking awesome Linkin Park song