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Home > Departments > Presentations > Public Library Construction > 5. Construction Options and Site Selection
- These are often the most difficult decisions in a building project.
- Among the issues are choice of site and of construction type (expansion, new construction, or conversion of an existing building).
- If your current building is an historic one, that will limit your options. Check with your state and local preservation agencies and with your local government before going too far with planning.
- When it comes to site selection, try to avoid having your library become a pawn in local development or redevelopment. Your library may be good for a neighborhood, but the neighborhood may be bad for your library and for its service to the community.
- Renovating existing structures can sometimes (but by no means always) save money and be good for public relations, but be sure that you understand the true costs in terms of both conversion and long-term occupancy. In particular, watch for:
- Floors strong enough to carry library weights. Libraries must carry live loads of 150 pounds and up per square foot, and few existing non-library buildings can handle this without reinforcement.
- Ability to provide sufficient cable conduit and wiring.
- Ability to provide restrooms in the proper locations.
- Adequate ceiling height.
- Absence of extensive bearing walls.
- Ease of meeting accessibility requirements.
- Large open spaces for easy supervision.
- The cost of moving people between floors.
- Environmental problems, such as asbestos, lead paint, and underground fuel tanks. All of these can be extraordinarily expensive to correct.
- In general, it is harder to convert existing buildings to libraries than to most other purposes. Consider what universities do. Most new buildings are for science and engineering, for athletic functions, and for libraries. For very good reasons, the humanities and social sciences—which need primarily office and classroom space—get the remodeled buildings.
- Be sure that your new or expanded building can be expanded again in the future. People who want you to use inadequate sites will argue that the electronic revolution means that your library will never need to be expanded again. But they are wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
- Be sure your site is large enough. If you will be providing on-site parking—and most libraries do—you will need a site at least four times as large as the total floor area of your library. (Obviously this does not apply to central business district libraries in large cities.)
- Remember that the best public library sites are good commercial sites. If it's not a place for a nice store, it's not a nice place for a public library. Among the un-nice sites to avoid are:
- Sites directly next door to high schools or junior high schools. If schools are at least two or three blocks away, students can reach the library easily, but it's not the first thing they find when they boil out the doors at 3:00 p.m.
- Sites in government centers, next to city halls, police stations, and fire stations. These are frequently proposed, but they don't lend themselves as well to the multi-purpose trips that libraries need as commercial locations do.
- Sites in parks, unless the library entrance is directly off a well-lighted, busy street and facing commercial development.
- Sites in areas citizens hesitate to visit after dark, or hesitate to have their children visit alone.
- Because good public library sites are good commercial sites, good public library sites aren't cheap.
- MOST IMPORTANTLY: The world is awash with surplus buildings and sites that are white elephants. Many are vacant or undeveloped for very good reasons. Don't let people unload them on your library. Always keep in mind that converting an existing structure to a library can cost 2/3 as much as starting from scratch.
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