Eighty years after it was built, 55 years after an addition was installed and 13 years after the last expansion plans were put together, Concord Public Library is looking again at how, and whether, to expand and change.
“It’s aging, and not so gracefully in some areas,” said Todd Fabian, director of Concord Public Library. “There are a lot of places closed off in the building. The floor space is 57% usable right now. … For a library, that is very low. … We have half of our collection in storage.”
The library recently presented its preference from designs drawn up by Boston firm Oudens Ello.
“We wanted to know what we can do with this facility moving forward, how do we modernize it … to what libraries are today in 2020 vs. what they were in 1940,” said Fabian.
There is no specific timetable for pursuing an expansion, especially with the uncertainty caused by the pandemic.
“We’re hoping to get feedback in the next few months from councilors, see what the economy is doing, what our revenues are like. It’s another step in the process,” said Fabian.
The main library building was constructed in 1940 and an addition put on the back in 1965. It sits on about two-thirds of an acre, with access to city-owned parking lots behind it.
In 2007 the city paid for a study looking at expansion options, including relocating to somewhere else in Concord, but nothing came of it.
The new study looked at a number of options, all of which kept the current building. One conclusion quickly reached, Fabian said, was not to try to add a third story.
The preferred plan as presented recently by the board of directors would create a two-story extension stretching back from the library along Prince Street over the current parking lot. It would also make changes to the current building, such as adding a sawtooth roof above current atrium for more light and allowing the current small spaces to be broken up, which is more important than ever in the social-distancing era of COVID-19.
“The challenges are creating sight lines, adding visibility, open space. With the cavernous ceilings, nooks and crannies, small spaces, this building isn’t as usable, especially now,” Fabian said. “We need more floorspace, more open angles, more light, but also we need it to be flexible.”
While the proposal would increase the floor area of the building by about one-quarter, from roughly 35,000 square feet to 44,000, better use of floor space means it would increase the area for public programs by one-half, from 19,000 to 30,000 square feet.
That would include room not just for more book, video and other collections and more temperature-controlled space for historical documents but also public areas, possibly including a makerspace.
Many benefits in the plan wouldn’t be obvious to patrons, such as moving the tech support and staff out of the basement and making shipping and receiving more convenient.
The rough estimate for the expansion is $19 million to $20 million.
One issue with an expansion, as with most construction in most downtown areas, is parking. The expansion would reduce the number of adjacent spaces.
“I did not want to limit them by saying ‘give us X amount of parking space,’” said Fabian, noting that there are no mandated parking minimums for public libraries in New Hampshire. Part of any planning process would involve dealing with this complication.
(David Brooks can be reached at 369-3313 or dbrooks@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @GraniteGeek.)
