Taking Libraries to the Public : Design: Poway is turning a vacant Longs Drugs into a first-rate facility, though not everybody is happy about it.

In an effort to compete successfully with video, movies, shopping and other distractions, public libraries are stepping up their marketing efforts. No longer content with quiet suburban branches, libraries are moving into malls, which have replaced churches, town squares and city halls as the public centers of many American cities.

In Poway, city leaders wanted to build a new library in the city’s central business district, but they were unable to find a suitable lot. So instead of building from scratch, they are going to convert an old Longs Drugs in the Poway Towne & Country Shopping Center on Poway Road.

At a cost of $4.7 million, the city will transform the cavernous Longs, vacant since last year, into a 24,000-square-foot contemporary library.

This plan, however, doesn’t sit well with two partnerships that own the rest of the shopping center, even though city officials are confident the library will have a revitalizing effect.

The partners don’t think a library will draw enough people to have a positive impact on business, and they have sued the city for $2.5 million. But they can’t stop the library project, only seek damages, according to Poway City Atty. Steve Eckis. The plan was approved by the Poway City Council last week and construction is scheduled to begin next spring.

Cardwell/McGraw Architects of Seattle and San Diego have incorporated a sky-lit interior and a new entry defined by concrete columns, a steel awning and a public plaza.

Aside from getting a good building in an excellent location (the site is already owned by the city), Poway will save 15% to 20% off the cost of a new building.

There are some built-in difficulties, though, such as the estimated $100,000 cost for asbestos removal, and hundreds of thousands to bring the Longs building, built in the mid 1970s, up to current energy and earthquake codes.

But Cardwell/McGraw believes these obstacles are minor. The architects, who recently designed a new library for Carlsbad (construction could start next year), plan to make the bland Longs building, next to a doughnut shop, into one of the city’s more attractive public structures.

To do that, the architects will have to strike a delicate balance. The remodeled building will need to be a good architectural neighbor to businesses in the mall, a collection of conservative wood, shingle-roofed buildings. But the library needs to stand out as one of Poway’s most significant civic buildings.

Cardwell/McGraw is opting for a design that is restrained in appearance, but makes a statement through an inviting landscaped new entry plaza, a logical floor plan, thoughtful attention to the use of simple materials, and carefully manipulated natural light.

The design will keep the Longs’ concrete block walls as important features. But the new design calls for adding several small windows and three larger banks of windows on three sides of the building. The fourth wall is shared with the doughnut shop.

Four new large skylights will spill natural light into a central space with a high-ceiling. The library will utilize an open floor plan designed for maximum security. Which means it can be operated by as few as three employees, an important consideration given today’s spare government budgets.

The Poway library won’t be as progressive in design as some of the newer branches in San Diego. But its location in the heart of Poway, along an important auto and bus thoroughfare, will be as vital to its success as the architecture.

“This library is in the center of activity in Poway, and that’s where it needs to be, not out on some beautifully landscaped spot that’s not accessible to the majority of the community,” said Joye Davisson, president of Poway Friends of the Library. “I think times are changing. People are so busy that if we can tie our activities together, it just makes good sense.

“I do not believe that a library is an end destination. People will plan to go to the library as part of a trip. They might also go to the post office, do some shopping, go to the grocery store.”

Poway residents are used to checking out books from a shopping mall branch. But they have outgrown their old 5,000-square-foot facility in a smaller downtown mall.

David Smith, a library consultant in Hopkins, Minn., who is working with Poway to shape its new library, thinks it will quickly become a busy place.

Circulation at the existing Poway branch amounts to 150,000 books a year, but Smith says that could rapidly triple.

“If they reach a half-million circulation in the first couple years, that could translate into 250,000 to 300,000 visits to the mall,” he explained. “My experience has been almost universally favorable towards (new libraries in malls). There’s a mall in Delaware where the developer is donating a pretty valuable piece of property to insure that a library is built in his mall.

“It’s like establishing the new downtown. Libraries, banks, post offices. If you have those basic services, they enhance the other commercial activities.”

According to Smith, Poway is not the only city with plans to reuse a big, old mall building in a good location.

Escondido is working on plans to convert a 45,000-square-foot Big Bear shopping center downtown into a library and community center.

“Reusing older buildings for libraries is growing,” Smith said. “Supermarkets and drugstores are pretty adaptable because they have a large shell with no impediments.

“I’ve been around 30 years as a public librarian and consultant, and it amuses me that we’re rediscovering the commercial, central-city location.”

According to Smith, the current trend of locating libraries in downtown commercial centers is only a new take on the old tradition of libraries on town squares, with malls replacing Main Street. This revival marks a shift back toward city centers following the migration toward the suburbs that dominated the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s.

“Right now, we’re looking at more central locations, trying to get as much value for a library as possible,” Smith said. “The notion that a library should be set in a park, next to a school, has become passe. The idea that a library should be near a high degree of traffic, should be in a highly visible central spot, makes good sense.”

And, although malls aren’t traditionally acknowledged as symbols of higher learning, Smith, who has consulted on more than 100 library projects, says they are the wave of the future.

“Most successful libraries these days are located in shopping centers--smaller ones in small shopping centers, larger ones in regional malls.”