Redondo Closes Books on Library Site Dispute : Building: The City Council unanimously decides to use interim facility next to old library rather than relocate to city’s north side.

A local tug-of-war over an interim location for the Redondo Beach public library ended Tuesday with a decision to locate it next to the old library in Veteran’s Park, rather than on the city’s north side.

The interim library will open in its temporary modular quarters in about eight months. The books then are scheduled to be moved into a new library building on Pacific Coast Highway in 1994. The venerable Main Library, which is too small to accommodate the reading needs of the community, will be retrofitted to meet earthquake codes and used for an as yet undetermined purpose.

With little discussion, the City Council followed a suggestion originally put forth by a local high school senior and voted 5 to 0 to keep the city’s book collection in a prefabricated building near the oceanfront spot that it has occupied for 61 years.

The interim building, which will cost about $1.5 million, will be a modern, 20,000-square-foot modular unit within the park, about 8,000 square feet larger than the Main Library, said city engineer Ken Montgomery.

Montgomery said the extra space is needed to accommodate current laws requiring wider aisles for handicapped patrons.

The decision settled a months-long search for a temporary library site that ranged from Aviation Park on the city’s north side to the basement of the May Co. department store in the South Bay Galleria.

After spending nearly $10,000 on consulting fees, the city came across a proposal by Redondo Union High School student Kelly Frick, who, at a “Leader for a Day” session at City Hall, suggested that readers would be just as comfortable in a portable unit next to the Main Library, and the site would be more convenient to students.

The idea initially was opposed by the city’s Recreation and Parks Commission and by neighbors who feared the modular unit would end up being permanent, eliminating the need to build a new library or modernize the old one.

The commission preferred instead to put the interim building in North Redondo Beach, on the tennis courts at the west end of Aviation Park. But South Redondo residents balked at that idea, too, arguing that the move would put both the city’s main and branch libraries in North Redondo. Meanwhile, the Library Commission was lobbying to put the temporary site in the City Hall parking lot.

Then, two weeks ago, the city was notified that it had received a coveted $10 million-plus state grant to help finance a new library on the Pacific Coast Highway where the Pep Boys auto parts store now stands. The news virtually guaranteed that a new library would be built, helping assuage earlier concerns.

The decision to construct a new library building was based on a consultant’s report that warned that the Main Library, built in 1930 as a sailor’s reading room, was woefully inadequate for the city’s 1991 needs. All but inaccessible to the handicapped, the building has no automatic doors, narrow aisles and no handicap access in its single public restroom.

Its limited shelf space is covered with books, and a lack of central temperature control has warped hundreds of volumes. There is no automated system to warn library employees when books are being stolen from the building.

The Main Library, meanwhile, must be retrofitted to comply with another state law, requiring the repair or demolition of unreinforced masonry buildings that fail to meet earthquake safety codes.

Montgomery said the retrofitting is a “very delicate job” that will take about two years to complete. Afterward, he said, the city will decide what to do with the vintage building.

Possibilities, according to Mayor Brad Parton, include turning it into a senior center or a branch library when the retrofitting is completed.

The modular unit, meanwhile, will also be recycled once the new library is finished, Montgomery said. One plan is to move it to another spot in the city for use as a public works building, he said, and another is to use it as an interim police station, should the city pass a bond issue funding construction of a new police headquarters.