Student’s Novel Idea May Solve Library Plight

Informed last spring that their city’s library might collapse in a moderate earthquake, Redondo Beach officials spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to find a temporary home for the building’s 98,000 volumes.

But the proposal that City Council members voted to pursue Tuesday was not the product of the voluminous city staff reports and consulting studies on the subject. The source, in the end, was a high school senior.

Redondo Union High School student Kelly Frick, attending a “Leader for a Day” session at City Hall last week, suggested that a portable building be set up next to the Main Library in Veterans Park.

Passed on to the city engineer on Monday, the proposal won solid support at Tuesday’s council meeting, where a standing-room-only crowd debated where the library’s books should go. In the process, it eclipsed several other plans, including construction of a temporary library in May Co.’s basement in the South Bay Galleria.

“A lot of students don’t drive and if the council moved it to the May Co. we couldn’t go that far,” said Frick, who presented the council with a student petition Tuesday calling for continued library services in south Redondo Beach. “I was so happy they passed the motion.”

The new plan still faces a joint hearing before the park and library commissions and a final council vote. But its progress stunned city officials accustomed to glacial deliberations.

“Literally, this went, in 24 hours, from concept to public acceptance,” city engineer Ken Montgomery said Wednesday. “I’ve never seen anything like that in my 20 years of public service. It was staggering.”

Councilwoman Kay Horrell said: “And it was out of the mouths of babes, as they say.”

City officials have been hunting for temporary library sites since last summer, after two seismic studies determined the 60-year-old Main Library was in danger of collapsing in a moderate earthquake.

The city wants to build a new, larger main library and reinforce the current one for another use. Built to serve a city of 10,000, the 12,700-square-foot Veterans Park library is considered far too small for the city of 60,000 that it serves today.

But, in the wake of the seismic studies, the city wants to vacate the Main Library immediately--more than two years before a new one could be built. If the city does not do so, City Atty. Gordon Phillips said Tuesday, its liability would be significant, because it will be “in the position of creating a trap” for residents.

After months of study and nearly $10,000 in consulting fees, the main proposal on the table Tuesday was a city plan to rent and rebuild the basement of the May Co. store in--north Redondo Beach--one of more than a half-dozen sites considered.

But many residents Tuesday objected that this would concentrate library service in north Redondo Beach. The city operates a branch library at 2000 Artesia Blvd.

Cost also caused objections: $1.5 million to convert the basement to a library and rent that would escalate from $40,000 in the first year to more than $100,000 in the second year.

Enter Frick’s proposal: Set up a modular building in Veterans Park.

The city could buy and install an attractive structure there for $1.5 million, Montgomery told council members and the public, and later sell it or use it elsewhere. After hearing numerous residents warm to the plan, council members endorsed it unanimously.

“It’s just a common sense idea,” Horrell said Wednesday. “We can reuse it and we can lop off a lot of the cost of the move.”

The council vote came as sweet revenge for Frick, who saw her idea scotched by schoolmates at last Thursday’s Leader for a Day session, in which high school students assume the roles of city leaders, debating and voting on issues.

Frick said she had checked her idea out with her father, a carpenter for the Los Angeles Unified School District, and felt confident that it was more serious than some of the other library proposals that had been pitched to the “mock” city council. One, she said, involved construction of a space needle.

Even so, her plan got a cool reception. “They totally shot me down,” Frick said. “They said it was pretty impractical.”

But it appealed to Councilwoman Horrell, who attended the student session. Horrell passed it on to Mayor Brad Parton, who set the wheels in motion.

City leaders expect the proposal for a modular building in Veterans Park to stir concern among members of the Recreation and Parks Commission. Several members of the panel said Wednesday they are reluctant to lose open space--a precious commodity in Redondo Beach.

“I can’t speak for the commission, but our charter . . . is to obtain and preserve open space,” said Mark Conte, who serves on the 10-member panel.

But Kandi Lancaster, who chairs the Recreation and Parks Commission, said Wednesday she was open to the possibility: “It’s innovative. My concern, of course, is the loss of green space. But where else do you put it?”