Via Tacoma News Tribune: On Thursday, the Pierce County Library System opened a new interim Lakewood library on the corner of Gravelly Lake Drive Southwest and Alfaretta Street Southwest. It will be open seven days a week. Read more at The News Tribune website.
$9.5 million spent on this little building, tht is clearly too small for the lakewood community. While the old library was fine ….. and served us all well. That millions were spent on a very small, ugly square building, when lakewood’s real need is to figure out how to help the many homeless people here . They don’t need your new library, they need a roof and a bathroom, and a square meal, and a bus ticket to get to a job interview. Wasted my tax money. I realize it is not that simple, to throw money at the homeless problem…. but this expenditure did not solve anything, not even the library problem.
And, remember……this is a TEMPORARY library.
Way to go Pierce Library System in carefully spending tax-payer funds………wonder WHERE and HOW MUCH the PERMANENT LAKEWOOD LIBRARY WILL COST.
How many beds does it have. Winter’s around the corner!
It is inconceivable that a temporary building of 7500 square feet should cost $9,500,000! That amounts to $1267 a square foot for what amounts to a “vanilla shell” (simple) building. A typical “Class A” building (high commercial standard) for this area costs about $289-$437:
https://www.autodesk.com/blogs/construction/commercial-construction-cost-per-square-foot/#average
This a huge waste of our taxes paid for library service and I suggest an investigation by Pierce County Council into this profligate waste of our taxes.
I respectfully ask Linda and Eric to get involved, learn more about choices available to PCLS Trustees; maybe consider joining Friends of Lakewood Library (book sale in a month). AND, by all means, come visit the interim library. You’ll have plenty of time, as “temporary” likely means a decade or more. By then possibly Lakewood will offer a suitable location, one large enough to provide space worthy of the permanent library Lakewood deserves.
The real question Bob is who drafted up the “…choices available to PCLS Trustees…”. Were they the only options presented as available? What was the cost/benefit and to whom? Any commercial real estate broker/investor could have told you that the temporary library was multiple times more expensive than similar quality and purpose buildings. Did the trustees go outside the PCLS (which has a vested interest) to explore other options? If “trustees” are to be trusted then they have to explore all options not just those presented to them. This is no different than the CPSD Superintendent giving school board (or city manager giving the council) “one option” (oxymoron) and having them blindly approve it because they didn’t look beyond to all the options available to them.
Bob, that “suitable location” already exists. It is the location of the Tenzler Library.
They should NOT sell that property, but hold onto it for the distant future when they will be able to afford to rebuild Tenzler.
So much concrete.