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After several years spent
searching for a new library site, the Durango Public Library
Advisory Board on Monday voted to recommend the Mason Center
site to the City Council for approval./Photo by Dustin Bradford. |
After several years of searching for a locale
for a new library, the Durango Public Library Advisory Board
firmly set its sights Monday on the site of the Mason Center.
Although the decision to recommend approval of the Mason Center
site to the Durango City Council was lauded by weary board members,
it did not go without criticism and opposition.
The 2.5 acre site at the northeast end of East Third Avenue,
bound by 12th and 13th streets, contains Durango’s only
two publicly owned tennis courts, a playground area known as
the Mason Pocket Park, and the Mason School, which houses the
Adult Education Center and Durango Latino Education Coalition,
as well as Durango Parks and Rec programs including gymnastics
and karate.
The library’s original plan called for a 33,000-square-foot
building and 130 parking spaces. However, that has since been
increased to a 40,000-square-foot building and 160 parking spaces,
said Sherry Taber, the library’s director. “The
square footage was increased because we need a building to take
us beyond 2020,” she said.
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The Mason Center property could become
the future home of the 44,000- square-foot Durango Library,
although some neighbors and users of the property
would like to see otherwise. /Photo by Dustin Bradford |
If approved by the City Council, the new library and accompanying
parking spaces would require demolition of the Mason Center,
as well as leveling of the park and one if not both tennis courts.
However, some nearby residents, representatives of the local
tennis community and the organizations that would be displaced,
say the new library may come at too high a price to the community.
“We’re all trying to let the city know that we’re
just not in favor of this location at all,” said Stephanie
Cooper, president of the Durango Tennis Association. Although
Cooper said she is “100 percent in favor of a new library,”
she said losing the Mason courts would be a big hit to the tennis
community. Already, demand from her group, with more than 1,500
active members, outweighs the available facilities.
“Our organization has absolutely exploded,” she
said. “Those courts were only built six years ago, and
we don’t want to lose those.”
Cooper said up until last Saturday, drop-in tennis at the Mason
courts was still drawing a large crowd. Furthermore, the senior
tennis players reserve the courts twice a week, and the Tennis
Association uses the courts to teach students from the Los Amigos
tutoring program, housed in the Mason Center.
Residents, occupants speak out
Although displacement of the Los Amigos tennis program is a
concern, Cooper admits that perhaps a bigger concern is that
of losing a home for the program – as well as the other
ones housed in the Mason School.
“The Mason Center has a lot of activities,” she
said. “I don’t know where these people are going
to go.”
The Durango Latino Education Coalition, which has been in the
Mason School since September after being displaced from Sacred
Heart Church last year, is one such organization. Deedee deHaro-Brown,
director of the coalition, said although her group has been
in the center only a short while, it has been long enough for
her to see how valuable a space it is. “One of the things
I’ve noticed is how highly used that building is,”
she told the Library Advisory Board on Monday.
DeHaro-Brown also said the Mason Center is ideal because of
its proximity to the homes of many of the coalition’s
members as well as the Pocket Park.
“We hate losing things that are close to the Southside,”
she said. “And we hate losing that playground.”
She also stressed the shortage of parking and questioned what
the increased traffic flow would do to the neighborhood. “There’s
a severe parking problem there, and already there’s a
lot of traffic,” she said.
Cooper also has observed the traffic problem and thinks a library
will only make it worse. “The library gets 1,000 visitors
a day, and with a new library this would double,” she
said. “That’s a huge impact.”
Carol Withers, president of the East Third Boulevard Neighborhood
Association, said while the association has not formed an official
stance on the issue, the amount of people the library would
draw also is a concern among a number of the group’s 167
households.
“Some of the people are upset over the fact that there
will be a minimum of 1,500 people a day coming into the neighborhood,”
she said. “Of course we’re devastated. Would you
want 1,500 people in your back yard?”
As a potential neighbor to the site, Withers said she also
is worried that the metered parking at the library will send
traffic spilling into adjacent streets, where parking is free,
worsening an already bad situation.
“Traffic is such a problem and parking is deadly,”
she said. “We can’t find parking right now in front
of our house.”
However, Ed Angus, city appointee to the Library Board, notes
parking is already a problem at the existing library and more
spaces may actually improve the situation.
“Parking may be a problem, although it could be less
of an impact than at the existing library,” he said.
Matt Kenna, another nearby resident, also expressed concern
over losing the park and surrounding open space. “The
open space there does get used a bit,” he said.
Kenna, whose uses the park often with his family, raised the
possibility of underground parking to save the open space.
“What I want to know is, to what extent can the existing
footprint be used,” he asked the board.
And although board members did not rule out the idea of below-level
parking, they did not make any promises.
“It would depend on how the architect designs the building,”
said Ed Angus, city appointee to the board. “But it is
a possibility.”
Seeking solutions
It is this element of uncertainty that critics of the Mason
site decision say is perhaps the worst part about losing the
facility.
“The city said they’d rebuild the courts, but we
don’t know where that will be,” said Cooper, of
the Tennis Association.
However, members of the Library Board say they cannot make
any promises right now because it is simply too early to make
such decisions.
“We are just at the beginning stages of the planning
process,” said Bob Dolphin, Library Board member and interim
president of Fort Lewis College. “But I am convinced this
is the place to start.”
During his nearly 20 years at FLC, as dean of the School of
Business Administration and later as vice president for business
and finance, Dolphin said he saw the completion of several campus
buildings, and that often problems worked themselves out over
time. Nevertheless, he reiterated the board’s commitment
to working with the Mason Center’s occupants.
“We are concerned about displacement,” he said.
Taber, with the library, also stressed the importance of working
with the Tennis Association should the Mason site be chosen
by the City Council.
“We do want to work with them,” she said. “Another
tennis court location would have to be found. Those courts are
very special, and I understand why.”
However, she noted a solution will require participation from
all sides.
“We all know how Durango is, and it’s so tight,”
she said. “It’s going to take some creative brainstorming
from all those involved.”
Already, several possibilities have been thrown on the table.
Cooper has suggested that one solution would be a new tennis
center near the Durango Recreation Center.
“If (the city) built us a new tennis center, yeah, we
probably could let go of those courts at the Mason Center,”
she said. “But we absolutely do not want to lose those
courts until that time.”
Other solutions include putting the displaced organizations
in the existing library once the new one is built and putting
new courts at the old power plant site, which was originally
among the library board’s top three sites.
“Anything’s a possibility,” said city council
member Amos Cordova, who attended the Library Board’s
Monday meeting. He expressed approval over the latest decision
and said he would do everything in his power to expedite getting
the library’s plan in front of the City Council.
“I’m prepared to put up a battle for that,”
he said.
Cordova was joined by at least one other elected official in
praising the Library Board’s initiative.
“I’m glad to see that the Library Board is making
a decision,” said newly elected County Commissioner Sheryl
Ayers. “It’s time for somebody to bite the bullet,”
However, critics feel that the decision is being rushed into,
and that a more comprehensive development plan should be put
in place before a new library is built.
“I don’t see why all these groups just don’t
come together and make a plan,” said Cooper.
Withers expressed similar sentiments.
“As a neighbor, I think it’s short-sighted to put
the library here,” she said. “If this is going to
be the library for the next 100 years, I wish they would be
bold and less in a hurry.”
But Taber, with the library, said time is of the essence.
“It’s time for us to move forward,” she said.
“We’re bursting at the seams.”