Palace Envy: Bragging with Architecture

"Costs for high-rise projects in San Francisco have ballooned to over $400 a square foot." (San Francisco Business Times, July 24, 2006). However, Measure N would spend $733 per square foot in Oakland to make Kaiser Center into a new main library. How did the cost climb so high? And why do City Hall insiders propose such a burden on Oakland taxpayers?

Grand architecture in big-city libraries these days features a huge central atrium, topped by a skylight. San Francisco's main library has a multi-story atrium that unfolds a breath-taking view of the other visitors gawking just like you. Seattle's new public library boasts an atrium, too.

Councilmember Quan, the ambitious library director, and some other City Hall insiders think Oakland ought to have the same glory. "The Main Library should be an architecturally striking landmark." (Master Plan PowerPoint presentation, July 28, 2004, slide 59) Let's build a new main library! And we can do it in Kaiser Center!

An atrium, however, removes the structural strength normally embodied in floor beams. Consequently, the City would in effect build a new building within Kaiser Center. As the feasibility study done for the City explained:

"Structural engineers from Rutherford and Chekene ... proposed a new structural approach to infill the arena with new floors around a central atrium to fulfill the library program. This approach proposes the selective removal of the arena floor and part of the basement floor below it, drilling new pile foundations upon which will be built new steel braced frames with concrete-topped metal floor decks." (Feasibility Study for Re-Use of Kaiser Arena, June 2006, p. 30)

Multi-story atrium wastes space at huge cost

Piles 80 feet deep; specially braced frames; concrete shear walls; and steel trusses at the top – these keep the walls from pushing out and falling to the ground. Construction would be further contorted by attaching new floors to the existing building:

"Along the north wall of the arena it is envisioned that new floor area ... will be integral with the existing construction and structurally separate from the main new structure within the arena. As such it will require braced frames or shear walls for lateral support, and may require foundation strengthening at braced frame locations."

Cost per square foot: $733 and rising. Furthermore, City Hall must have "custom millwork for display shelving." (Feasibility Study for Re-Use of Kaiser Arena, June 2006, p. 52) Does a book read better after it sits on a custom-milled shelf?

The feasibility study desperately tries to justify the showoff architecture: "A central atrium organized under a restored historic skylight will bring daylight deep into the building and will assist customers with wayfinding." (p. 32) If we don't give you an atrium, you might get lost using the elevators. To be sure, light is helpful when you read a book or magazine, and the existing main library has tall windows all around. Kaiser Center, a dark arena, has less window area. A relatively small skylight over an atrium is a hugely expensive, misguided attempt to make Kaiser Center "work" as a library – but City Hall has a bad case of palace envy.

Planning for a modernized library system began in 2002. Until recently, at least seven simpler options were under consideration:

• renovation of the existing main library
• acquiring or building an annex to house back-office functions
• expansion of the existing main library with additional floors
• enlarging the existing main library around itself, converting the existing outer walls into inner walls
• a new building at the existing location, or next to Kaiser Center, or at another site downtown
  These alternatives were listed in the draft Master Plan as late as October 2003.

However, none of these solutions would catapult Oakland to the top of the architectural heap. City Hall insiders seem to regard efficient housing of books as something beneath a "world-class" city.

Councilmember Jean Quan has praised the new main library that Seattle completed in 2004. It has a big atrium. It won an architectural award.

Seattle did it for $466 per square foot.

Just as important, Seattle civic leaders did not hide that they wanted a building for their own pride. Libraries seem to be like museums – a prominent city must have a prominent architectural icon visited by upscale tourists who spend a few moments bubbling with "oohs" and "ahhs" over a magnificent atrium.

Seattle's wealthy elite paid up. The Library Foundation raised $16 million toward construction, part of an $82-million fund drive it undertook for things like "higher quality furnishings" such as those custom-milled bookshelves. Directors of the foundation include an official from the Paul G. Allen Foundation, funded by a huge Microsoft fortune. Top executives from Verizon Wireless and Starbucks are directors, too.

Back in Oakland, there is no such elite foundation ready to help. It's up to taxpayers to bear the entire burden.

It hardly matters to the city council. The council went into the Raiders deal, and taxpayers are still paying millions of dollars every year for that disaster. The City promised free days at the zoo in return for new funding, but the promise was tossed aside almost as soon as it was made. Now the city council expects every flatlands homeowner and everyone who shops and pays sales tax to bear the full freight of architectural bragging at a new main library.

If cost overruns and the $15 million shortfall are paid out of the City budget, taxpayers will get even less basic service than they get now. In a city that barely keeps its streets repaired and has half a police department, that is an outrage. Or the council may "postpone" promised improvements for the neighborhood library branches, already reduced in Measure N to mere crumbs.

If you want a real library that houses books and other compilations of information efficiently, Measure N is not for you. If you want to improve the branch libraries, Measure N is not for you. We must bring the city council back to its senses.

No palace library! Vote No on Measure N!