A welcome new chapter in the central library debate

With a unanimous vote to pursue the idea, the city needs to tread cautiously

As the city prepares a plan to seek proposals from private investors for a new library to replace the shabby existing main branch, we have time for a public debate on where it should be built, how much we should spend on it and — perhaps most important — what we have learned from other private-public partnerships.

Even before the Ottawa Public Library board members unanimously voted Monday evening in favour of Coun. Jan Harder’s motion to start looking for a possible private partner to replace the decrepit central branch, enthusiasts were already making suggestions for where a new branch might go.

In a letter to the Citizen, Ottawa Centre MPP Yasir Naqvi made a preliminary pitch to build a new central branch at Bayview Yards, where a provincial government-funded “innovation centre” is currently under development. Naqvi, the minister of community safety and correctional services, makes the salient point that the property is already owned by the city and is situated at Bayview station, soon to be the nexus of the east-west and northsouth rail lines.

Developers of downtown properties — especially those near the two downtown LRT stations — have quietly been making inquiries about how a publicprivate partnership might work. Incorporating a proper central branch into a real-estate development could give the project some cultural cachet. And, let’s face it, partnering with the city on a new library could mean more density for the developer.

These are very early days still in this new discussion over building a new central library. But already there’s some excitement about what possibilities exist.

And it’s about time we’re talking about this again. As a city, we became demoralized when the last effort to replace the dilapi-

We’re in this central library mess because 40 years ago, the cheapskate city leased a chunk of its property …

dated main branch at the corner of Laurier and Metcalfe failed back about five years ago. But over the last few years, library staff have quietly been doing their due diligence, ordering up engineering reports, conducting proper opinion polls and research about what people want in a modern library (think less physical collections, more community and independent work spaces). The result? Turns out the library folks think they can serve the city with 130,000 square feet of central library space, instead of the 345,000 the library was demanding in 2008.

But it turns out that transforming the downtown building into something we’d be proud to count as a public asset would cost $70 million. Fixing just the basics would cost $40 million.

So instead of voting to throw good money after bad, the library board directed the city’s real estate folks to come up with a process to invite private partners to develop a new main branch either on city land or other property, as long as it takes advantage of the upcoming LRT system. It’ll be next year by the time the request for proposals is ready, which seems like forever to those of us who’ve been wanting to forge ahead on this project.

But the time will allow us to start having a public debate about how we want this project to roll out. The first question we’ll want to discuss: How central is central? The idea of what constitutes downtown Ottawa is broader than it was 20 years ago, but is Bayview too far west? Or perhaps the possible views of the Ottawa River and Parliament Buildings — and it’s connection to both the LRT and the O-Train — make up for its locale a little out of the traditional downtown.

We also must talk about what we’re willing to invest in this key block of city-building. Think of how we could leverage the $40 million we’d have to spend on a basic upgrade to the library in a P3 deal. But we need to commit public funds to this public asset. Council allowed a massive amount of retail at Lansdowne Park because they wanted to profess that the project would be “revenue-neutral,” a claim that is tenuous at best.

Which brings us to our final point: what have we learned from other P3s that we shouldn’t be repeating? Indeed, we’re in this central library mess because 40 years ago, the cheapskate city leased a chunk of its property at Laurier and Metcalfe — a lease that isn’t up for 20 more years. If it wasn’t for that seven-decade deal, the city could build a fabulous new library at the site of the current lousy one.

And it’s worth pointing out that, of the cities building new central libraries, not many are public-private partnerships. That doesn’t mean it can’t be done. But if we want to do it properly, then we need to be hashing out the details now, while public officials are looking for our vote.