Overdue for the Library

Lake View Terrace has been waiting a long time for a branch library, since 1988 to be exact. Now the land-use chairwoman of the Lake View Terrace Improvement Assn. says she’s willing to wait a few months longer to get a design she likes. But it may not be as simple as that.

Then-City Councilman Richard Alarcon originally envisioned a Spanish colonial revival design with energy-efficient and eco-friendly features, a laudable goal for any city project.

But the original plans proved too expensive. And the branch went unbuilt, 12 years after a city library master plan first identified the need.

Alarcon’s successor, City Councilman Alex Padilla, has done a good job finding the funding to get library plans moving again. In the meantime, changes to the design shaved $1 million off the price tag. At last a library is within reach.

Lake View Terrace residents should have a say in the new design, and they will have that chance at a community meeting March 16 at 7 p.m. at Fenton Avenue Elementary School. Padilla will be there, along with library officials and the architects.

A building’s--and perhaps especially a library’s--design is an important reflection of its community. But a library is important to its community, period, and Lake View Terrace has gone far too long without one.

Too often people enter land-use and planning meetings with entrenched ideas and an aversion to compromise. They emerge without a plan.

Lake View Terrace residents have a chance to show the rest of the San Fernando Valley an alternative approach. The goal of the meeting scheduled for mid-March should be to come out with a library everyone can live with, but most important, to come out with a library.