If you asked the board and staff of the Flathead County Library to provide their vision of a new headquarters building in Kalispell, I suspect they’d answer, “We need more space, a bigger parking lot — and we really, really don’t want to move.” In other words, a lot of improvement, but little change.
I suspect that’s why the three “final” sites for a new or expanded headquarters building were south of Highway 2 and east of Fifth Street West. In fact, one site is the current site, an antique post office that has its charms, but which wouldn’t merit a second thought if it were not already a library.
Yesterday, the library unveiled architectural concepts for the three sites. What struck me was the common thread that tied them together: an underground parking garage was needed; needed even after the 55,000 square foot requirement was relaxed to 52,000 square feet. To my mind, that’s proof that the three old downtown sites are too small, and have no future growth potential. There is no shortage of open space in Kalispell — a city that has doubled in area in the last decade, and now extends north to Church Drive — and therefore there is no need for underground parking.
I recommend that the committee charged with choosing a new site for the headquarters building in Kalispell discard these sites and look at the situation anew.
One problem in assessing the needs for the headquarters is that the current push for a new building — and I agree that a new building is needed — started six years ago. Kalispell has changed, and so has Flathead County.
In particular, I recommend looking at these questions:
(1) Where is the geographic center of Kalispell? Where will it be in 20 years? The current center can be determined in a minute or so by querying the city’s or county’s GIS database. The projected center requires making some assumptions about growth, but professional planners should be able to provide those assumptions with sufficient confidence to legitimize the results.
(2) Where is the population center of Kalispell? Where will it be in 20 years? Again, the GIS experts and planners can provide this information pretty quickly.
(3) To what extent, if any, are surveys of current library patrons providing guideance to the project? The correct answer: no survey of patrons should carry much weight. It would not be a valid sample of the residents of the city or county, and would be skewed to keeping the library in the same place.
(4) To what extent, if any, is walking distance to the libary a factor in siting decisions? Apart from the difficulty of defining walking distance (it will vary according to the season and the age and fitness of the patron), the idea just isn’t very useful. No matter where it is located, the new headquarters building will always be (a) within walking distance for some of the population, and (b) beyond walking distance for most of the population. Therefore, the site needs to have a big parking lot and a dedicated area for unloading buses.
(5) The current push started in 2003. At that time, it was thought that 55,000 square feet would be needed by 2020. Six years later, with the city almost doubling in size, and the county growing rapidly, the amount of space needed was reduced by just over five percent. Why? On the face of it, this makes little sense other than to ease the task of shoehorning the building onto a cramped site. But what is the point of building on a cramped site when sites with more space are available?
I have the uneasy sense that the almost desperate sense of urgency that’s driving the campaign has generated a convenient myopia, that the board and staff are not looking far enough into the future. A 15 to 20-year horizon is too close. It needs to be extended to 35 to 50 years, and enough land acquired to accommodate subsequent expansions.
This will take some extra time — and time is available. The board should not delude itself into believing that the voters will approve a bond issue for a new building anytime soon, not with the economy in its current predicament. Construction costs are down, but so are the bank accounts and net worths of the voters. Even testing the waters with a bond tolerance poll would be a waste of money at this time. I suspect that voters won’t be willing to consider raising their property taxes until at least 2012.