Riverside panel recommends separate museum, library expansion plans
10:00 PM PDT on Friday, June 6, 2008
By DOUG HABERMANThe Press-Enterprise
RIVERSIDE - The Main Library downtown and the Riverside Metropolitan Museum directly across the street should have separate expansions designed with enough space to enable them to meet their respective missions.
That was the key recommendation coming out of Friday's meeting of the task force that the City Council created to study the future of the library and museum.
It repudiates a city proposal for a $25 million joint expansion. That proposal had been working its way through the city approval process until a January public meeting in which residents overwhelmingly signaled a desire for two separate projects.
Residents who spoke at the January meeting said they feared a joint project would shortchange both the library and the museum. The council created the task force to help it settle the matter.
On Friday, when the consultant to the task force, Jeffrey Scherer, asked the panel at its fourth meeting if the library and museum should share space as part of their expansions, members rejected the notion.
The tentative set of principles the panel developed to guide the expansion of the library and museum includes:
The Main Library expansion will be on the present site and the building will be an icon that represents the city's commitment to lifelong learning.
The museum is an integral part of the downtown cultural center and its expansion will include exhibit space downtown that can host world-class exhibits.
The library board will recommend how much expansion space is needed for the Main Library and the museum board will do the same for the museum.
The boards will determine the space needed by considering the institutions' missions, demographic trends in Riverside, best practices in the library and museum fields and opportunities for the two institutions to collaborate.
The task force is not discussing the architectural design of the expansions.
Its tentative recommendations are expected to be available to the public by June 11 on the city's Web page and at library branches. That would give residents a week to study them before a June 18 public hearing the task force is set to hold at City Hall. The meeting is planned for 6 to 8 p.m.
Only 14 members of the 22-member task force attended Friday's meeting. About 30 members of the public attended.
Several residents who addressed the panel at the beginning of the meeting voiced their support for a proposal presented at the prior meeting by the Raincross Group, a civic advocacy organization.
It called for a 60,000-square- foot expansion in front of the library building, with a basement and two stories, and a 30,000-square-foot expansion of the museum in the parking lot behind the museum, at a total cost of $38.3 million for both projects.
The Raincross Group also recommended the city build a parking garage on Mission Inn Avenue between Lemon and Lime streets, where a 90,000-square-foot, six-story building has been proposed.
Hugh Layton, vice president of the Riverside African American Historical Society , said the group backs the Raincross plan.
"We believe the bifurcation of these two noble institutions is the only way to preserve their autonomy," he said.
The task force decided not to get into square feet in its recommendations, in part because it won't have time to delve into the precise space needs of the institutions.
The task force will finalize its recommendations at its last meeting, scheduled for 3 to 7 p.m. June 25 at City Hall.
Plans call for the City Council to consider the recommendations at its Aug. 12 meeting.
Reach Doug Haberman at 951-368-9644 or dhaberman@PE.com
