Aliso Viejo Turns a New Leaf With Planned Library

For the financially strapped county library system, there is great uncertainty these days.

Calls for change are coming from all quarters, whether it be to reorganize the 27 branches into regions or dissolve the county system entirely.

But whatever happens, Aliso Viejo residents know one thing: Their planned new library, complete with clock tower and coffee bar, is already paid for and immune to the county’s travails.

Every year for the last several years, every Aliso Viejo homeowner has sat down and written a check that ranged from hundreds to thousands of dollars in special taxes to pay for the extras in this unincorporated community: roads, schools, fire stations . . . and with groundbreaking scheduled for June 13 at Pacific Park Drive and Journey, a state-of-the-art $5-million library.

“There’s a tremendous community resentment” over Mello Roos property tax assessments, said Steve Dickey, president of the Aliso Viejo Community Assn. “But one thing is for sure, without Mello Roos, we wouldn’t be getting this library.”

The facility will represent the next generation of libraries--all wired up for computers and speedy connection to the Internet. It will be one of the few public libraries in the country where a patron can check out books, then grab a cup of coffee or a sandwich on the premises.

But even better, Aliso Viejo residents and those planning the building hope the library will signal a period of growth for a new community that has so far lacked identity.

Aliso Viejo is a planned community that started about 15 years ago and is now reaching 26,000 residents, with an eventual population of 45,000. There is no city hall, no movie house, and until Pacific Park Drive was extended two years ago, no major streets passing through.

The few stores and public buildings that do exist are familiar points of reference for residents. “You don’t even give directions around here, you give landmarks,” said Marshall Schlom, president of the Friends of the Aliso Viejo Library.

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A distinctive two-story clock tower will give the 21,000-square-foot library instant landmark status that will “provide a visual signature,” said John M. Adams, head county librarian. “It will be visible for quite a ways and become a concrete emblem for the identity of Aliso Viejo.”

With a 3,000-square-foot meeting room and the coffee shop, residents say, the library also will become the social center for Aliso Viejo, which just saw construction start on its first major shopping mall.

The library “is going to give Aliso Viejo a much more intimate feel,” Dickey said. “It’ll be a good place for people to meet.”

Following the Rancho Santa Margarita branch, which opened in late 1994, the Aliso Viejo facility will be the second county library built with fees charged by developers. The operating costs of about $500,000 a year will come out of the county library general fund.

The state started cutting library funding in 1991. Since 1992, the county library budget has shrunk by $5 million, prompting sharp reductions in hours that were reinstated only when a hard decision was made to close smaller branches.

With further cutbacks pending, a county report in March looked at putting the library system under a regional system to cut administrative costs. The one municipality in Orange County that doesn’t have a library, Laguna Hills, has suggested that the county system be disbanded and that tax revenue to support libraries be returned to the cities.

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Amid all the chaos, Aliso Viejo citizens have been paying their annual Mello Roos fees and waiting somewhat impatiently for the community developer, the Mission Viejo Co., to build their library.

There have been grumblings in the community from residents upset about lack of control over how their Mello Roos taxes are spent on projects such as the 3.9-mile section of the San Joaquin Hills toll road.

But “people are very happy to see the [Mello Roos] money being used on the library,” Schlom said. “They’re happy that the money is staying in the community.”

The library will be one of many changes coming.

Less than a mile from the library, plans for a 300-acre retail project are moving quickly. Tenants include a Super K department store and an 18- to 21-screen Edwards Cinemas movie complex.

Another major project on the horizon is a golf course, and a sheriff’s substation already is under construction.

The realization that the library is finally coming hasn’t quite sunk in for some, and it probably won’t until the grand opening, tentatively scheduled for late 1997, Dickey said.

“It’s been so long in coming, it’s like taking a deep breath out,” he said. “It like now we can get excited.”

Getting support for the Friends of the Aliso Viejo Library has been slow work, mainly because “there’s nothing for people to see yet,” Schlom said. “But I’ve seen our books [being assembled at county offices in Santa Ana] and I’ve seen our address on them.”