Designs for downtown Silver Spring’s new library take their next step Thursday evening, but plans for a pedestrian bridge over Wayne Avenue are still up in the air.
“This is a critical juncture to determine how parking will impact the building’s design,” David Dise, with the department of general services, told council members Monday morning during a budget work session in Rockville.
If built, the bridge will connect the new library on Fenton Street and Wayne Avenue with a public garage across the street. But county officials, as well as residents, have mixed opinions on whether it can or should be built.
MoCo exec Ike Leggett wants the estimated $600,000 bridge, which will connect the garage’s fourth level with the library’s third floor. That way, the county won’t have to construct pricier underground parking on the library site. Disabled bookworms also are happy to have a bridge because they believe Wayne Avenue traffic is too dicey to dodge.
“We’ve looked at options for [onsite] disabled parking, and cost is a primary factor,” Dise told council members in March. “Some of those costs are prohibitive, and we don’t want to hold up design of the library.”
Preliminary plans drafted by Dise’s department assume the bridge will be built. (Read: There is no plan B.) Those early designs will be revealed Thursday evening during the first of three public forums at the Silver Spring International Middle School.
However, the county’s planning department says a bridge will be inconsistent with Silver Spring’s urban-renewal plan. That document encourages pedestrians to use sidewalks (instead of bridges) to create a bustling cityscape. Some residents also worry the bridge will choke efforts to jump start Fenton Village’s economic health.
So what’s a county to do? So far, the county council has opted to tweak the urban-renewal plan to accommodate the bridge, though that has its own hurdles.
First, the county’s planning board has until May 19, 2009, to pull together its recommendations on the proposed tweakage. Then, the council will hold a public hearing on the matter in early June. It could tackle the issue head on later that month, Essie McGuire, a legislative analyst for the council, explained to her bosses.
If the county council rules that tweakage cannot occur, then it’s back to square one with the designs, general services’ Dise said. The council, in its 2010 budget discussions, already told Dise to get some non-bridge design options cooking if he wants to score the $2 million needed to roll desgins forward in the upcoming fiscal year.
In the meantime, residents will be allowed to throw in their two cents on the library’s exterior design at the public forums.
Photo: A view of the new library site from the Wayne Avenue garage. Credit: J. Deseo/SSP.
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Put the library in City Place! The bridge is already there, the library is in a better place, and we’d probably save a pile of money to boot.
I’m with you Gary!
L.P.
Why is on-site parking even needed when there’s that monster garage across the street?
Agree with Gary and would add…if you can’t afford to build the proper parking, it shouldn’t be built there. Either leave the library where it is or put it where the parking is.
There is a parking garage across the street from the proposed site. Why do we need more?
Why is it an either/or between underground parking onsite and a bridge to the parking garage (per Ike Leggett)? Why can’t it be neither? Do you know, Penguin?
I’ll say again, I fail to understand why a few vocal people are so frantically in favor of this bridge. Disabled people and stroller moms cross the streets at atreet level all the time (and I speak as a stroller mom with wheelchair using friends). Plus, it’s not like library patrons will be guaranteed spots immediately adjacent to the bridge entrance — you’ll have to maneuver around the garage and most likely up and down the garage elevator (on the opposite side of the garage, away from the library) anyway just to get to the bridge entrance. Cars in that garage are NOT looking out for pedestrians; there’s no clear place for humans to walk and the cars speed around the corners. I would find a sidewalk and crosswalk actually less scary.
The difference between on-site parking and the parking garage is that currently, on-site parking at the Library is free. If you only have parking at the garage, you will be paying a parking fee to use the “free” library. There was quite an uproar late last year with a proposal to charge parking fees at all the libraries. On-site free parking would be best for fixed income retired and lower income users.
Is there free parking at DC libraries, like MLK? I don’t know for sure, but I sincerely doubt it. Even the library in Towson (similar downtown to SS) has a pay parking garage (they also have a ped bridge, but…). If you a put a library in an urban place like DTSS, you have to deal with the constraints of that, you can’t just build your way around it. Put a few county-subsidized library-only free spots on the ground and second floors of the garage. Have the library validate or something.
I worry, just a little, though, that library patrons will use the Whole Foods/Strosniders lot, which is already overtaxed by DTSS and church parkers.
I think there may be meters at one or two of the libraries, if I’m remembering the original discussion of parking. The three libraries which I have used extensively do NOT charge for parking. Those are the current Silver Spring Library, Wheaton Library and Kensington Library. The Silver Spring Library allready has a rule that parking is for a maximum of two hours to discourage parking for commuters etc.
BTW validation of parking for Library users would be OK too. They could apply the two hour rules to discourage commuters from trying to get free parking.
In response to previous question, yes, DC libraries provide on-site free parking as do all the MOCO libraries, including the current Silver Spring one.
If the MLK library downtown has free parking it’s the best kept secret in DC. I walk by that library every day and there are no signs or any other evidence that there is free parking there.
trider,
Not a secret to those DC residents who patronize MLK:
Free parking is available in the garage below the central library. Not only that, all the metro lines are within 1 block: red/green/yellow and blue/orange. This is DC’s Central Library.
All 21 MoCo libraries currently provide free onsite parking.
All 25 DC libraries provide free onsite parking
All 23 Fairfax libraries provide free onsite parking
All 7 Arlington libraries provide free onsite parking
The current proposal is a problematic location, especially since they can’t provide onsite parking. They should just renovate the current location. Same with the Wheaton library.
They really should put up some signs at MLK re the parking.
As to keeping the library at its current location versus the planned location – the new location will have public transportation on sight and is across the street from a giant parking garage – in fact the walk to the front door of the new library from said parking garage can’t be more than an extra twenty yards compared to the walk from the far side of the current library parking lot to its front door and there will be a lot more parking spots available. When you consider that the current library is nowhere near a subway/trolley line and the new location will be sitting on top of one I really don’t get your argument that we should keep the current location if, as it seems, you are arguing for more/better access to the library.
Seriously, we are talking about crossing the street to get to the library. Is it really that much of a burden. Isn’t the idea to make DTSS a walkable area, increase foot trafic to benefit the local merchants and generally get people out of their cars? Doesn’t adding more parking ACROSS THE STREET from a giant parking garage go in the other direction? Spend money to improve the crossability of the Wayne-Fenton intersection if needed, but spending more money to add parking seems entirely counter-productive.
Oh, one other thing it is not true that all 25 DC libraries provide free onsite parking.
from the DC library website re the Takoma branch:
“Parking: There is no off-street parking at this library location.”
Same for Langston and Mt. Pleasant, then I stopped checking. If we are going to have discussions about what is best for our neighborhood we should base the discussion on actual facts.
The garage is not free, not dedicated to the library, is frequently backed up and in the middle of one of the most congested and pedestrian unfriendly areas in the County. Why should taxpayers pay to park at the free library they are financing to build when there are more viable options? The current location has been perfectly acceptable for the last 52 years and for those that travel via public transportation, it is on a bus line and not far from the metro. The current location is as close to the metro as any other MoCo library is. That proposed location is GRIDLOCKED during morning and evening and there isn’t anything in any future plans that shows that changing anytime soon. There is plenty of room to expand the current location.
The service area for the Silver Spring Library includes more than DTSS and there are lots of SS citizens who don’t use or are not accessible to public transportation.
That parking garage is filling up pretty fast, and getting in and out of it is really hard. The library really needs its own parking.
I’ll probably walk to the libarary myself, so I just wish they would go ahead and build a new larger library and get more books! The current library really does not match the needs of the community any longer.
We don’t need an on-site parking facility for the new library. There is a parking facility right across the street and it is more than adequate to handle the parking needs of future library patrons. I don’t want my tax dollars to be wasted on on-site parking for the new library.
I think common sense in this case would be “You can’t please everyone all the time.”
DTSS is an urban environment that has its drawbacks for drivers (traffic, limited parking) and pedestrians (car/bus traffic mainly). The council/planners should do what they can to mitigate those issues–providing free (but not unlimited) parking near the library, providing access for the disabled, and improving pedestrian safety at the Fenton/Wayne and other nearby intersections. What they cannot do is offer a library that is located in DTSS, traffic-free, with unlimited onsite free parking and door-to-door transit for everyone who lives in greater SS/SSINO.
I’m looking forward to the new library, and I’m all for healthy questioning of authority and plans, but I’m disappointed at voices that seem to be trying to derail the project.
Amen to TJ — the library does not NEED free parking. I use the TP DC and they do not provide this and there are no complaints. Shep Park DC has about 5 (often empty) spaces total and is full of patrons. The Borders books’ customers a block down have no problem walking from the same garage and other nearby ones with their heavy books and baby strollers. A small pull-in area off Fenton to drop-off/pick-up folks needing assistance should suffice.
Why should non-driving county taxpayers subsidize this free parking amenity? Where is the free bus vouchers to/from libraries for the truly poor and working classes? This clearly is NOT about access or social justice.
Let’s build his new library already!
Felt so hopeless looking for answers to my quetsoins…until now.