City Needs New Main Library--at the Community Concourse

It was Sunday, June 27, and more than 10,000 people gathered for the opening ceremonies of the new Central Library.

The city had desperately needed a new facility, and a group of concerned residents had worked hard for passage of a bond issue to provide funding for the building. Library commissioners could be justifiably proud. They knew that the building represented the latest thinking of the country’s foremost library architects. The library was designed to meet the needs of San Diegans for another 16 years.

That was 1954, and San Diego was a small city enjoying the leisure of the California sun. Few people anticipated the population explosion that would create the vital city of today.

Now the nation’s eighth-largest city, the population of San Diego has increased more than 175% since that opening day. Long before 1970, the library’s collection was larger than planners expected. Today the library is obsolete and woefully inadequate. Studies completed in 1977, 1981 and 1983 concur: “The Central Library of the San Diego Public Library has for more than eight years been considered outdated and overcrowded. This is the most serious inadequacy in the county . . . “ (League of Women Voters, 1983).

In August, 1983, I introduced a resolution calling for the immediate construction of a new Central Library downtown. I did so because it is inconceivable that a government that regards the education of its citizens to be so important that it provides free schools and substantially subsidizes its college and university system, would allow libraries to languish.

Libraries are the core of education--the essential element upon which democracy is dependent. The public library is the community’s principal resource for assisting its citizens in their pursuit of knowledge. It does so without admission requirements, free to all regardless of wealth, race or worldly position.

Libraries are the memory of mankind. Should some holocaust destroy all intellectual institutions except libraries, civilization could be rebuilt. However, if the libraries were destroyed, all the other institutions combined could not recover the loss. The Central Library is more than the heart of San Diego’s 30-branch system. Its volumes complement other major research libraries and provide reference service for the Southern California area south of Los Angeles, and Imperial County. Within its walls is an extensive collection of government documents and one of three patent depository libraries in the state. Modern technology makes it possible to gain access to storehouses of knowledge all over the world.

After nearly a decade of inactivity, San Diego cannot delay longer if it is to achieve status as a world-class city and remain attractive to business, high-tech industry and provide opportunities for its citizens. We must build a new, larger, Central Library, and we must build it now.

Following the adoption of my resolution, the city manager established a task force to address the key issues of site, space-saving strategies, potential consolidation with other libraries in the area, and financing for the prospective new Central Library building. The criteria developed by the task force for evaluation of the site for the library building specified that among other things the library needed to be:

- In downtown San Diego.

- Sited to complement other government, cultural and retail facilities.

- Linked to other sites with high activity.

- Convenient to existing and planned public transportation.

- Convenient to the existing and future employment base of downtown.

- Convenient to the existing and planned residential development of downtown.

- Combined with other activities in a multi-use development.

When one applies these criteria to the possible locations for a new Central Library, one site--the Community Concourse--stands out as superior to all others. Established as the center of city government, the concourse is home to the City Council as well as to the city’s administrative offices.

The city’s largest cultural facility, the Civic Theatre, annually attracts thousands to the heart of downtown. An imaginary line running northward from the new Horton Plaza retail center and residential area and one drawn westward from B Street--the financial street of San Diego--would intersect at the Community Concourse. Bounded on the south by the trolley, and situated close to exits from Interstate 5 and California 163, the Community Concourse is within easy reach for residents from every sector of San Diego.

As the new convention center becomes a reality, there has never been a better time or greater opportunity to transform San Diego’s Central Library into a true community resource. The land beneath the existing convention center is already owned by the city. The location is easily accessible and at the nucleus of the city.

A new multi-use facility built on this site could include a library as well as compatible private and/or public facilities. Combined with existing facilities, San Diegans could be the beneficiaries of a governmental-cultural-educational complex that would rival any in the world.