THOUSAND OAKS : $515,000 Needed for Library Work

It will take as much as $515,000 to clean out the potentially harmful mold spores discovered last month and to fix the roof on the quake-damaged Thousand Oaks Library, according to city officials.

City Manager Grant Brimhall will ask the City Council on Tuesday to approve a plan that would have the Janss Road library open by August--six months behind schedule.

Workers repairing the building after the Northridge earthquake were evacuated last month after unusually high levels of penicillium mold spores were found in the cracked library walls.

“It’s going to delay the whole process,” Marvin Smith, library director, said Friday. “Any surface that would have absorbed any of the harmful mold will have to be removed.”

No one has entered the building without a respirator since Sept. 11, when the $3-million reconstruction was halted. Tests are under way to identify the spores and determine whether they are dangerous.

Brimhall recommends that the council appropriate $515,000 from the general fund to pay for cleaning the building and upgrading its roof. The money would be recovered through insurance or federal emergency funds, he said.

Fire sprinklers damaged books, walls and carpeting inside the library after the Jan. 17, 1994, earthquake. Mold sprouted inside some of the interior walls and reached potentially unhealthful levels last month.

The library was expected to reopen in February, but clearing the spores from the building will delay the work. Nearly 300,000 books were moved to a temporary facility on Willow Road.

Smith said he looks forward to moving back to the Janss Road site.

“It’s like living out of a suitcase where we are,” he said Friday. “It’s a nice building, but it’s temporary quarters.”