City’s E.P. Foster, Avenue Libraries Are Step Closer to Long-Awaited Face-Lifts

Step one in the great crusade to improve Ventura’s cramped, out-of-date libraries was to get them to stay open longer.

Step two is to make them places people actually want to go.

Now, with two of the area’s most well known architects drawing up plans to renovate two of the city’s three libraries, step two is about to happen, officials say.

“Unfortunately, we have been living with substandard conditions for years,” said Councilman Jim Friedman, who has served as the city’s liaison to the county on library affairs. “What’s being done now will finally create a user-friendly environment where we don’t have ultra-cramped conditions, or poor lighting.”

Nick Deitch of Mainstreet Architects is working on the Avenue Library which--if all goes well--will fill the ground floor of the Casa de Anza building, increasing the library’s floor space by one-third.

And Scott Ellinwood of Ellinwood Associates is being paid $47,000 by the city to draw up preliminary plans for the expanded E.P. Foster Library downtown. Officials hope to double its floor space from 16,500 square feet to 33,000 square feet by spring.

Both renovations are only interim measures designed to carry Ventura through the next five to 10 years, when the city plans to build one large central library.

But taken together, the renovations will be the first step in reversing decades of deterioration of local library buildings, officials say. More than that, they will mark the first tangible outcome of the county library restructuring for the city of Ventura.

“When I walk into our libraries I do not feel inspired,” said Bill Fulton, who heads the Library Advisory Committee. “The mere act of walking into a library should be an uplifting experience. When these two architects are done with these buildings, they will have that feeling again.”

On Tuesday night, the committee endorsed a basic design for the new Avenue Library presented by Deitch.

And Monday, in a public meeting scheduled for 7 p.m. in the children’s section of E.P. Foster Library, Ellinwood, along with library consultant Beverley Simmons, will meet with the public to discuss what they want to see at that library.

Deitch has worked on projects throughout the county, including Heritage Square in Oxnard and Holy Cross School currently under construction at the San Buenaventura Mission. But his specialty is rehabilitating older 1920s buildings--such as the towering brick Casa de Anza.

Ellinwood has worked on projects such as the Port Hueneme Library and Figueroa Plaza across from the San Buenaventura Mission.

“I think each architect is a great match for the building,” Fulton said.