Corona del Mar Today: Residents take a look at 4 new library proposals

About 50 people jammed into the Corona del Mar library branch on Monday afternoon to get their first glimpse of four possible layouts for a new library and fire station building.

The most expensive plan seemed the most popular.

“They are listening to what we’re saying,” said Joy Brenner, who founded the Friends of the CdM Library group this spring.

In May, the City Council approved the city’s 2015-16 budget, which includes $6 million for the project. The plan is to demolish the existing library and fire station, which are next to each other on Marigold Avenue, and then build one building to house both.

Preliminary plans called for a one-story library with 2,500 square feet of space, smaller than the current 3,750 square feet, and a two-story fire station with living quarters on the top floor. A lobby with restrooms would serve both entities.

Some residents complained that the new branch should not be smaller than the current one and asked, along with library trustees, that the architect consider adding a second floor for the library.

Kelley Needham of WLC Architects unveiled the plans at the Monday meeting. During a board meeting in May, he had been asked to develop four new plans.

None of the plans includes a second story for the library, he said, because a second floor would require stairwells, upstairs restrooms and elevators, which would add significantly to the cost of the project and eat up space on the first floor. There would also be little usable space upstairs, he added.

“It can be done, but it isn’t the great meeting room you imagine,” Needham told the standing-room-only crowd.

Instead, he showed new plans, some of which reduce the library size even more than originally proposed. One plan shows an entrance from the parking lot instead of off Marigold Avenue, and all showed a lobby separate from the fire station, as well as stroller parking, an outdoor reading patio and library spaces for adults that are separate from the children’s area.

Plan D, however, expands the second story for the fire station, allowing the library to expand into first-floor fire station space. The upstairs fire station area would include a six-person dorm, an exercise space and an office. The plan gives the library 3,850 square feet, with 304 square feet outside for the reading patio. Plan D also includes 31 parking spaces instead of the other plans’ 22 spaces.

Plan D could add $500,000 to $1 million to the project cost.

Fire Chief Scott Poster said he preferred Plan D but added that the project is “already over budget.”

Others agreed that the bigger plan was better.

“I represent over 50 nannies,” said Florence Flor. “We want Plan D.”

Linh Do, a Friends of the CdM Library member, called it “a really great compromise.”

Mark Vukojevic, the city’s deputy public works director and engineer, said further information could be available at the July board meeting as well as at a community event being planned with the Corona del Mar Residents Assn. A date for that meeting has not yet been sent. He also said that all the plans would be made available on the city’s website.

Newport Beach Councilman Scott Peotter, who was overruled when he proposed delaying the project for a year so the funds could be spent on seawalls, said the City Council would have to approve additional funding for Plan D or have the price per square foot reduced.

Some residents have suggested that private fundraising could help.

Trustee Jerry King, who had been critical of the smaller library space and lack of community involvement early in the planning phase, praised the latest plans.

“There’s been a lot of give and take,” he said, “but with the limited space we have … there’s been a lot of balancing.”

Corona del Mar Today appears Sundays in the Daily Pilot. Read daily updates at coronadelmartoday.com.