(This journal entry is part of a series relative to an upcoming Aug 7 vote on Renton libraries. To see my earlier entries for more background on this topic click here )
The proposed Piazza Park library (depicted artistically above) could create a twenty-five million dollar deficit in Renton’s budget over the next ten years by requiring us to build and operate an environmental interpretive facility that we have no money for.
The larger existing Cedar River Library (above) could be brought up to “brand new” KCLS standards with money already bonded plus a one-time expenditure of $800,000. This $800,000 (which equates to just 8 weeks of our tax payments to KCLS) could come from either KCLS in recognition that our libraries are serving many non-Renton residents, from sale of the old highlands library property since the Highlands library is being relocated, or by making the libraries a little less fancy.
Many Renton citizens vividly remember the financial picture that brought us to the KCLS-annexation election two years ago. With the on-going recession and revenue cut-backs, the city could barely afford to keep spending the 1.8 million dollars a year to keep the library open. (Click here for the story in the Renton Reporter). As explained in the Renton Reporter story, when we lost staff we could not afford to replace them, and the buildings were falling into disrepair. With this sad story, the city set the stage for an extremely close election to annex to KCLS. Now that the annexation is complete, Renton taxpayers are funding KCLS with five million dollars a year, a 280% increase over the 1.8 million dollars reported as the 2008 library budget. In addition, the City still collects the 1.8 million dollars per year from Renton taxpayers (that we said we could barely afford), and we have dedicated it to pay off bonds $19,000,000 dollars in bonds to upgrade the library buildings themselves. And by the way, the economy is still bad, and we are still having to cut costs in the City of Renton.
The $19,000,000 we secured in bond money will build us an all-new much larger highlands library (which serves many non-renton KCLS residents who live east of the City of Renton), but falls about $800,000 short of doing the desired just-like-new remodel of the Cedar River library “to the modern KCLS standards.” This $800,000 one-time deficit could easily be bridged by KCLS contributing this amount, which is about eight weeks worth of the taxes they collect from us; this would be a small contribution considering Renton taxpayers are paying nine million dollars to triple the size of the highlands library in part to serve out-of-city residents better. As an alternative, we could cut back the fanciness of the Cedar River Library remodel and get it done without a KCLS contribution.
The Renton Highlands library will move to an all-new building (depicted above) that is triple-the-size on Sunset Avenue/ Highway 900, so that it can more easily accommodate both Renton and non-Renton (east-plateau) KCLS users. Renton residents alone are paying the entire nine-million dollars in cost for this new building.
But just when Renton taxpayers might assume they have paid more than enough to fix the library problem, advocates of the “New Piazza Library” are ready to add countless millions of dollars of additional costs to Renton’s already over-stressed budget– they want to move the downtown library to a new location with no concern about finding the money to either operate or remove the iconic library building over the Cedar River. Piazza library advocates are generally repeating a simplistic message– that the Cedar river building can be repurposed as an environmental interpretive center. But no one knows how much this would cost, or what it would take annually to operate, or where the money would possibly come from. If we don’t use our library bond to renovate it, then there is no money to pay for the new roof it needs, the heating and plumbing issues it has, or any of the renovations required to make it an environmental interpretive center. And the 1.8 million we were using to heat it and staff it when it was a city of Renton library is now dedicated to paying off bonds, and the five million a year we give to KCLS has maxed out our property tax collection capability. If we can not find the money to operate this building and we abandon it, we face the very real possibilities that federal or state agencies could force us to remove it. This cost would also be in the millions of dollars, and would either cut Liberty Park off from parking on the other side of the river, or require that we replaced the library with a new bridge for millions of dollars more. Any way you deal with the unused building, you are looking at millions of dollars of unbudgeted costs.
In the face of all these unknown costs, Councilmembers Greg Taylor, Marcie Palmer, and I felt that we should hold off making any changes to the downtown library until we had a complete plan. The pre-annexation agreement with King County Library System sets no required timeline for these renovations, and no one could expect us to go forward with a renovation without a complete plan and a means to pay for it . However, the three of us were outvoted, and the split-council put the incomplete Piazza Library plan in work.
Concerned citizens circulated petitions so that Renton voters could have the final word on this decision. This was good news, but unfortunately voters have a shortage of information (since the Piazza Library plan is still incomplete) and there are parties that seem to have no qualms about glossing over this fact. For instance, KCLS prefers the Piazza library idea, largely because it is smaller and therefore more efficient to run (less staff and fewer books on site). As far as I can tell –with a still unfulfilled Freedom of Information Request in the pipeline– KCLS is about ready to send out a mailing at taxpayer expense to tell every Renton resident about the economies that the library district will enjoy with this new building WITHOUT reminding residents that they will be on the hook for new costs from the City of Renton. Meanwhile, some Renton business owners are in favor of the Piazza library plan because they like the impact of city investment in this part of town, and they probably assume taxpayers will find some way to deal with the costs at the old library site. These business owners are starting to broadcast this revitalization message, while glossing over the fact that the proposal is short by millions and millions of dollars.
I’ve tried to find out what I can about the anticipated costs of an environmental interpretive center. What I have found is that modest ones cost about the same as libraries. For instance, here is some information about a built-from-scratch environmental Center in Pittsburgh. It costs about the same per square foot as a KCLS library. Closer to home, Seward Park now hosts a smaller fairly new environmental center (click here for info) that was accomplished for two million dollars in a historic park building– but the building is much smaller than Renton’s, it started out in fundamentally good condition, and did not need the three-million dollars in earthquake retrofitting that Renton’s building would require. These comparisons would suggest a price range of five to ten million dollars to remodel Renton’s Cedar River building into an environmental interpretive center.
Looked at another way, the Robinson Company prepared an itemized report of the upgrades that are desired to turn the Cedar River Library into a modern building for KCLS, and came up with 10.1 million dollars. When I look at this report, item for item, almost all of the features look applicable in an environmental interpretive center. For instance, the building needs a new roof for about a half million dollars, new plumbing and electrical for about a half million each, etc. Things like bathrooms upgraded to ADA standards would be the same, etc. The part that is different between an environmental center and a library would be the final outfitting and furnishings, and these are not in the Robinson Company estimate because they are KCLS responsibility. Hence, the ten million dollar figure might be about right, or perhaps even on the low side, to outfit an environmental interpretive center.
Note that this assumes a fairly modest environmental interpretive center that lacks some of the features that were discussed/pictured in a Renton library-repurposing committee report prepared last spring. For instance, the committee report includes the possibility of a “green roof,” which would be a growing carpet of grass or other plantings to absorb and transpire roof rain water–certainly a neat feature on such a building. But such a feature is also very heavy, weighing up to 25 pounds per square foot for all the drainage gravel, soil, sod, and membrane layers, and the extra structural requirements combined with the complexity could add significant additional cost to the building beyond the rubber membrane roof that we would use on the library. As another example, a photo on page 15 of the report seemingly depicts a large aquarium in the facility– and perhaps we would want amphibians, insects and other animal life. This type of vision for the building is both beautiful and costly. From personal experience, last year I visited an excellent example of such a building in San Fransisco. The city has remodeled their historic Academy of Science Building into a modern environmental interpretive center, complete with a green roof–along with aquariums, insects, reptiles, amphibians, taxidermy-preserved mammals and many, many displays. The building is about 18 times larger than Renton’s library, and the renovations cost came in at about 500,000,000 dollars (half a billion dollars). At this level of cost/quality/complexity, outfitting a building the size of Renton’s Cedar River building would cost 28 million dollars.
Again, I think ten million dollars would be modest to renovate our Cedar River building into a environmental interpretive center.
With regard to staffing and maintaining it, I don’t see how it would be much less expensive to maintain than the library was, and in fact it could cost more if it included significant living displays. In 2008 our total library budget was about 1.8 million, which included operating the 4000 square foot highlands library. I would guess that in 2013, if we wanted to field a high quality environmental interpretive facility, and we looked for every economy possible, we could possibly operate it for 1.5 million. This amount of money would roughly cover about 14 full-time equivalent staff (which would be two shifts of seven to staff the building and manage exhibits for 70 hours per week, minus vacations, sick leave, training etc), keep the exhibits fresh, and provide about a few-hundred-thousand a year for janitorial service, utilities, maintenance, insurance, and and other miscellaneous expenses. This budget would assume that we could recruit volunteers to interact one-on-one with visitors where we have interactive displays.
So in summary, we would need about 10 million dollars capital plus 1.5 million a year indefinitely to turn our Cedar River Library building into an environmental interpretive center, and we do not have this money or any plan to get it. Without the money, the building will likely go dark if the library moves out, and could be considered abandoned and we could get increasing federal and state pressure to remove it. If we were forced to remove the building, that would require millions of dollars more because we are demolishing over a river with endangered salmon, and because we would probably need to put a bridge back in place of the library. KCLS leadership never mentions the repurposing or demolishing of the existing library in any of their information, as they will not help us with this expense. Renton businesses in favor of the library move have also left this out of their literature.
Fortunately, the voters pamphlet addresses this issue, but the word count was limited– so if you know people looking for additional information please send them to this blog.
And no matter how you feel about this issue, please be sure to vote on August 7th. A large voter turn-out will assure that we are all in this together, whatever the outcome of the vote.
Excellent post, Randy! You’ve really captured the economic reality of building a new Piazza library and trying to repurpose the Cedar River Library. And I’ll note, that with all your great info regarding an Interpretive Center, a close 2nd by the group that studied the options was an Arts Center. In my opinion, that would be a great addition at the Big 5 site to downtown Renton, complimenting the Antique & Arts businesses already there.
Here’s a link to the City website with the complete study by Community Members on repurposing the Cedar River Library building:
http://rentonwa.gov/uploadedFiles/Living/CS/LIBRARY/Final%20%20Report%20Library%20Steering%20Committee%2004%2006%202012.pdf?n=665
I invite others to provide links & emails sent to Council about this Steering Committee & process.
Thanks Marcie!
1) The big question is WHY? Why are they so Hell-Bent to move the Library? As thousands of Renton Residents have said, “it makes no sense!” The motives of the 3rd street merchants are obvious enough, but where’s the real money going? If we could expose that we might have a better chance of saving the CRL. Clearly our opposition care nothing for due process and feel that no matter what Renton does or says they have no intention of respecting us.
2) And a major point that I don’t see mentioned anywhere is that more Libraries are not going to be needed. The explosion of digital media is reducing the numbers of people physically visiting libraries all over the world. And this is not “in the future” it’s happening right now. I myself, no techno-whiz, download books on line and read or listen whenever I please and rarely have to physically go to the building, except for the pleasure of being there; and classes, meetings, etc. and we hope, always children’s services . But the total numbers will go down, despite population growth.
3) The CRL already IS an environmental interpretive center. There is a reason the builders put the entrance on the river side , not beside the car park. I wondered at first about the inconvenience, now I understand. Colleges teach ecology there in season, and the River inspires every one who passes.
The Highlands Library is also beautiful and well built, needing no replacing, but no one seems to care.
We never voted for KCLS to extract 19 million dollars from us and (in my opinion) launder the money by erecting cheap, ugly redundant structures. As we used to say, in the South, the whole deal is crooked as a dog’s hind leg
Great report, Randy. I have another question re the West of the Piazza site. It was reported that the land under the Big 5 was formerly a gas station or auto repair shop with resulting hazardous materials and there may be an underground gas tank there. Has there been a study of the current condition of the site and what it would cost to clean it up? I would have thought the city would have checked it out before purchasing it.
Thanks for all the homework you’ve done.
Thanks Karen. I don’t remember being told about a former gas station before the purchase, although it is possible that others at the city did know. I don’t think we have fully studied the site yet to the degree that is required to break ground. I’ll look into the issue of site conditions and try to get you an answer.
Thanks for the straight forward facts. I wish we had them when we were originally voting to annex to KCLS. I suppose it is too late to pull back out of KCLS? For what we are spending, we would have done much better as our own library system.
That was a very informative post. I think people need to weigh ALL the costs before voting. The 9.3 million that KCLS has said is enough to build the Big 5 (West of the Piazza) site library as is just a base comparison taken from another “similar” building. What they have not disclosed so far is the specific additional costs for the Big 5/west of the Piazza site. That building is on a type of slip clay that can liquefy and needs special pilings driven in all over the site. It can’t use a regular foundation. Part of the Piazza Park will be taken out and replaced with 3 sterile square concrete walls with some plantings in them. Parking behind the current building that is shared by the apartments and the daycare is proposed to be dedicated to the library. This will cause congestion when residents and daycare parents can no longer use it and there’s already pushback regarding it. It seems like four of our esteemed council members are making an attempt to force people to use the mostly unused Diamond Parking pay parking facility. Don’t go a half-minute over – it’ll cost you $60.00! So – don’t browse, place your holds and get out library patrons! I can cruise like a shark for that one free parking spot – thereby depriving the local merchants of one more paying customer’s parking spot as I spend my unlimited browsing time. The unfinished cost estimate for the Big 5/West of the Piazza site, coupled with the repurposing costs for the current library building could easily cost Renton residents 25 million. So that 9.3 million KCLS touts has now grown by 15.7 million for the downtown library. And, as Randy said, that’s not counting the 1.5 million or so needed to operate a bare-bones “interpretive center” that would be little more than a pavilion with a hole in the roof to watch salmon from. What I think Randy forgot to mention is that if we go ahead with the construciton at the Big 5/ Piazza site we’re not only on the hook for the repurposing costs, we’re in the library business for as long as it takes to pay off those bonds. 1.8 million a year in debt service – the exact cost of our former library budget – I have the figures disclosed by a public information request. Add that 1.8 to the operating costs and debt service for the “repurposed” library building. Where does our “Gang of Four” think Renton citizens will come up with all these millions? Remodeling the library we have now into a state-of-the-art facility makes monetary sense. It also gives Renton an iconic focal point that residents can take pride in for years to come. A library unlike any other in the US. Weigh the lower costs and the beautiful location of our current library against the MUCH HIGHER costs and the concrete jungle of the Big 5/Piazza site. Any way you weigh them, our current library comes out ahead. There is no better place.
I appreciate your passion, Anonymous, but you’re not going to change undecided voters’ minds by venting. It only gives credence to the idea that the pro-Cedar River Library people are a bunch of crazy cat ladies and NIMBYs. I’m much more interested in hearing rational explanations and facts than hyperbole, from either side of this issue.
How is this just venting. This is everything I’ve been saying: hidden costs and unreasonable revitalization expectations. The only thing Anonymous left out was the complete failure of KCLS and the “yes” council members to even consider the needs of the library patrons in the site selection.
The downtown people are not proposing it for what is good for the library, they are proposing it as what is good for downtown.
You are absolutely right! Many things annoy me about this “plan” but the idea that this move will be good for businesses is contrary to all generally accepted marketing and business planning practices. It seems the chamber of commerce and downtown merchants haven’t evolved past Henry Ford’s Model T marketing plan.
Thanks, Randy, for providing so much info about this mess. I have written a letter to the Reporter using some of it to answer the 2 letters in the last issue.
Keep up the good work–all of you.
Great clear explanation about the hidden cost of doing something else with the Cedar River Library site.
As a cyclist, I haven’t had to face the parking situation, but it sounds nasty. I think if I was owned by a car I’d rather park it in an open lot like we have than in a garage off the transit-center, where criminals might be harder to spot.
I have here an old book I checked out, dating from 1957–a promotion of the town citing various businesses and amenities of the time [so much has changed!] There is an aerophoto showing downtown from the SW, and it shows me that next to the Roxy was a supermarket, and perhaps another business I am not sure of, and then what might be a gas station, I can’t tell for sure–this being located where that spirally thing with the trees is now. I will have to do further research to see what exactly was where on that block.
If actual library usage shrinks, it won’t be my fault. I have physical issues that limit computer time, and prefer books and mags in hardcopy. Also, I like to browse in the stacks, not in a catalog. And talk with the staff. I suspect there are folks in Highlands that feel the same way. Whether additional libraries will be needed someday I don’t know, but I can’t buy that line about how libraries are dying out due to online stuff, Kindles and so on. I can’t imagine life without them.
The tragedy of a smaller Piazza Library will be the winnowing of real books – even in this digital age, most books can’t be digitized due to copyright and licensing issues.
also there are people like me who go to the library with the sole purpose of getting books and such from the library. also I’m also seeing that if the library is moved money is being wasted. we already put money into the renovation of the library so why ditch it? especially since bringing it up to standards would cost less then moving it and then using it for something else still means it will be brought up to standards in order for it to be used for whatever it becomes
By now you’ve probably seen my letter in Friday’s Reporter. And you may have gotten the mailing from KCLS too. One thing jumped out at me from the latter–the people who claim to have found that restoring the Cedar R. building will cost 38% more than previously expected, are the exact same people working on the design of the Piazza building. How unbiased can that be?
As for “winnowing”–most libraries need to weed out the collection every so often; I recall just a few years back I found a travel guide to Germany that was so old the maps still showed the Wall. But it’s a shame when truly charming or unique items get discarded because there isn’t enough space.
Someone needs to 1] find the full history of the Big 5 site, with possible hazards there, 2] get it all straight about the hidden costs of both choices –the true cost of making the current bldg into an ecology center or whatever you call it, is a start.
When that is done, we can all rattle the cages of the KCLS board, pointing out that 38% more for 50% more library with 10000% more beauty, is still a bargain–and having the choice in the matter we should have had from the start, is priceless.
Thanks for your letter Kerrick. You make several good points. The KCLS analysis was rushed and not well-vetted, and as a result it had several mistakes and bad assumptions in it. This was a result of people trying to get something out before the election. I am going to cover this in a new blog entry in a day or two. And you are correct that they have already found that the foundation at the Piazza location will take special work due to the poor soil support conditions.
The City’s study was an apples-to-apples study, and it still stands. The Cedar River Library can be beautifully remodeled to modern standards for 10.1 million. The Piazza library will cost 9.3 million plus the extra foundation work, plus gifts to KCLS of Piazza park land and parkings spaces that are worth over a million dollars.
Whenever I originally left a comment I clicked on the Notify me whenever new comments are added checkbox and currently each time a remark is added I receive four email messages with the exact same comment.