The Silver Spring Penguin

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.