San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
SAN CARLOS TAKES MAJOR STEP TOWARD NEW LIBRARY
Neighborhood hoping state, feds will help with funds
It’s taken decades, an extended cleanup and support from so many people that not all the project’s original backers are still alive.
But residents of one eastern San Diego neighborhood may finally be close to a new library.
“We will get this done,” Mayor Todd Gloria said Saturday morning at a ceremony outside the San Carlos branch of the San Diego Public Library. “We will work as long as it takes, as hard as it takes,” to ensure construction of a “palace for the people.”
A number of similar efforts are under way around the region, and last year’s state budget included money for a new structure in San Diego’s Oak Park neighborhood and an expansion of Ocean Beach’s library.
However, residents of San Carlos, a community that includes the main entrance to Mission Trails Regional Park, have waited an especially long time for an upgrade.
Officials first touted the prospect in 1995, when the city moved to buy land that once held an Arco gas station. The site was perfect: It was on the corner of Golfcrest and Jackson
drives and adjacent to the current building. All that was needed was to ensure the ground was cleared of petrol and chemicals. That took a while. Saturday’s gathering celebrated that the cleanup had finished and the site, which is now a parking lot, had officially been bought.
“Without a place where young and old can come together to meet and to speak, to share and to learn, we have an ignorant society,” said Raul Campillo, who represents the area on the San Diego City Council. “Libraries help to deliver the knowledgeable society.”
The mood was celebratory.
A string quartet played and the library system’s mascot, a coyote named Odi, managed to high-five kids on sun-baked asphalt without passing out.
The current structure was built almost a half-century ago, and most of its 8,200 square feet are taken up by one room. Fluorescent bulbs are more prominent than sunlight and a sign out front is cracked and faded.
The new building would be more than three times larger. An artist’s rendering shows gleaming, walllength windows, an elevated deck and a community space that could stay open after the library closed. Hurdles do remain. The facility will likely cost about $35 million. So far, only around $11 million has been lined up, meaning there’s still $24 million to go, city officials said.
Leaders hope a chunk of that will be provided by the state of California — an application for a $10 million grant has been submitted — and Rep. Sara Jacobs, Dsan
Diego, is trying to get $850,000 from the federal government. (A spokesperson said she’d asked for far more but the total had been whittled down during ongoing budget negotiations.)
That would reduce the gap to $13.1 million, and leaders asked for help from private donors.
The city hopes to begin construction in the spring of 2026. The build would take about 18 months, meaning a grand opening could happen in about four years, in late 2027. The current library would be torn down in the process, meaning the neighborhood would have to go without for more than a year.
One silver lining: Since the price of the land was locked down in the 1990s, the site itself cost only $150,000, officials said.
Sue Hotz, a volunteer board member with the Friends of the San Diego Public Library’s local chapter, looked proudly at the designs. She’s lived in the area for more than 50 years and gave birth to her oldest son just weeks after the current structure opened.
Hotz now has six grandchildren, two of whom will likely be wrapping up college by the time the new library’s ready.
“Everybody kept saying, ‘When are we gonna build it?’” she said. “We couldn’t raise funds, we couldn’t do anything until we owned the lot.” Saturday’s news was “the first major positive thing” that had happened in some time.
Standing nearby was 4year-old Noemi Hodgkin. She’d recently checked out “Rescue Riders,” a book based on an animated TV series.
“There’s dragons,” she said. “They help people.”
Noemi hoped the new space might have books based on “The Lion King.” (The San Diego Uniontribune did confirm that at least one Lion King book is currently stocked at San Carlos.) Next to her was 8year-old Layla, who’d just renewed a Batman mystery, and their mom, Tricia.
“It looks amazing,” Tricia said about the new structure. The family moved to the area about six months ago and the sisters were already enrolled in a summer reading program. “I’m a huge fan of the library,” Tricia added.
A number of leaders from around the region were also in attendance, including former Mayor Dick Murphy and Misty Jones, director of the library system.
Several people brought up Judy Mccarty, a longtime member of the San Diego City Council, who died in 2019.
Mccarty was an early supporter of expanding the library. One archived news article from 1995 shows her smiling at a lecturn, next to an Arco executive, celebrating the start of the city’s lease on the land.