Waiting for the latest on the library
Last month I said I'd be returning in April to the subject of the Downtown Library Affordable Housing project, and April is almost over. My Sentinel colleague Aric Sleeper, who covers the city of Santa Cruz, has reported on what city staff has said to the City Council about the project, but a number of important questions remain unanswered, so I've been asking officials in City Hall, who I thought would have the information I was looking for.
More on that in a minute, but first: Why, you might ask, am I revisiting a subject that's “a done deal”? In 2022, voters decisively defeated Measure O — which sought to make the new library site a town commons and renovate the existing library on Church Street — so the city has proceeded, if somewhat sluggishly, with its promise to build a “21st-century library” combined with an apartment tower atop several floors of parking. Urgent need for affordable housing was among the arguments for building a new library and abandoning Church Street because that building was falling apart and beyond renovation due to “deferred maintenance” and it would be cheaper and quicker to start from scratch, joining forces with parking and apartments a few blocks away.
Measure S, the 2016 bond measure passed overwhelmingly to invest $67 million in renovation or reconstruction of the county's 10-branch library system, has fulfilled nine-10ths of its goal. The only branch unfinished — actually not even started — is the flagship downtown branch. Of the $27 million originally dedicated to that branch, about $25 million remains, a million or two having been diverted to the completion of other branches. So I'm still interested in this topic because eight years after Measure S, when $27 million was worth a good deal more than it is now, there is no sign of a new library.
I asked Bonnie Lipscomb and Brian Borguno of the economic development department if they could answer a few questions, and they kindly referred me to the public record of what they have already reported to City Council. Yet most of my questions remain unanswered. As I have no confidential informant inside City Hall, I am dependent on the goodwill and transparency of officials, and evidently they are reluctant to talk about unfinished business. The city's communications manager, Erika Smart, wrote to me, “We will not have any further updates … until we present our update to City Council in early May.”
I hope that update will include a detailed accounting of the financing for all three components of the project — library, parking and housing — as well as budgets for and estimated actual costs of each component, how any gaps in funding will be filled and how much more in 2024 dollars than 2016 dollars the whole project will cost.
In order to prevent the “deferred maintenance” that made the old library too decrepit to renovate, what is the estimated cost per year to properly maintain the new library, and has that been figured into the overall budget?
Just ahead of my deadline I've heard again from Ms. Smart, who reports that the city has closed the deal for the purchase of Toadal Fitness on Lincoln Street, demolition of which will be necessary to clear the site for construction of the mixed-use library. The selling price was $2.5 million, so I will be interested to hear where in the city budget (reportedly some $10.5 million in the red) that will come from.
These are just a few of the questions people who voted yes on S or no on O deserve answers to, along with realistic revised estimates of the already much-delayed timeline for financing, design, permitting and construction of a very complex and costly development whose projected completion — currently scheduled for 2027, more than a decade after Measure S — keeps getting pushed further into the future while the cost of materials and interest rates are steadily increasing.