Libraries : NEWPORT BEACH : New Library to Solve Space Crunch

When the Newport Beach Public Library opened its tiny Balboa Peninsula branch in 1929, it served as the main branch until 1980, when the current main building opened in Newport Center.

But with the city’s growth and increasing library use, the main library has outgrown its 14,000-square-foot building on San Clemente Drive. With books, reference material, computers, equipment and administrative offices packing the building, little room is left for patrons to just sit and read.

The crowded conditions should change in mid-1993, when a new two-story main library, more than three times the size of the current one, is scheduled to open in Newport Center near the corner of East Coast Highway and MacArthur Boulevard.

Plans for the $7-million building await approval but changes will probably be minor in coming months, Assistant City Librarian Tom Johnson said. The City Council agreed to pay for the new building in August. Library staff members are fine-tuning what services will be offered, he said.

“We’re not talking about rendering a different service,” Johnson said. “The new library will just allow us to render proper library service.”

The biggest problem with the existing main library is space for people, he said. “We don’t have adequate seating,” he said.

Browsers, students and business people going through the library’s extensive business references cannot all fit in the library’s 40 or so chairs, he said.

The new library will have seating for 181, as well as six study rooms, he said.

Some seating will be in a special section that will jut out on the second floor past the plane of the exterior wall, giving readers a wide view of the ocean.

The new library will feature a reading area at the entrance to house new books, paperbacks, magazines and newspapers and a reading area, Johnson said. The front area will also house videocassettes and compact discs.

In front of the main entrance will be a bookstore run by the Friends of the Library.

The new library should also have enough space to house the library system’s complete collection, Johnson said. The main library and three smaller branches now lack space for about 3,000 books and other material that must be stored elsewhere. Although the material is listed in the catalogue, patrons must wait a day before it can be pulled from storage, Johnson said.