downtown location for new central Ottawa Public Library?

The proposed location is currently mostly a parking lot, on Lyon, between Albert, Slater and Bay. (It's not clear if the library will cover just the currently open area, or the entire square block.)  This is the view looking EAST (the clearest view as buildings block the other angles).

See in Virtual Earth.

This is the Google Maps view looking down, with the location in the centre top of the map.


View Larger Map

You can also see in Yahoo Maps.

This location is really good news.  Ottawa has a lot of wide streets and surface parking.  I was just walking down Lyon the other day on the way to ICSTI 2009 at Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and thinking what a dismal street Lyon is as you enter this part of what I would call the Central Business District (which I guess is also called Upper Town).

The former Ottawa official plan says

In the future, Upper Town will contribute significantly to the vitality of the Central Area and especially the Core, as an attractive, livable urban residential neighbourhood which focuses on a unique heritage district and enjoyable pedestrian environment.

Which if you've ever walked down the car-friendly, pedestrian-boring Lyon or Laurier in this area is pretty hilarious.  And quite sad given the density of people jammed into the hideous concrete towers on Laurier.

This location has a lot of advantages:

• it is actually central, unlike the ridiculous "Ottawa is big so let's put the central library out in the suburbs" plans previously mooted
• it is right on the major transitway routes downtown, and apparently near the planned downtown tunnel as well
• it will bring some people and street life into this pretty dead urban space
• as an added bonus, there is a big and (as far as I can tell) totally unused green space just a block away, bounded by Bay, Laurier, Slater and Bronson.  I don't know if it even has a name, Google just shows it as an empty green block.  It's actually one of the biggest greenspaces in the downtown area and currently vastly underused.  I look forward to "library in the park" events there.

The only loss in this whole equation is the Scone Witch, which was always a bit of an odd location and building - OttawaXpress put it well: "Among the parking lots and commercial buildings of Centretown's business district lies a little eatery called The Scone Witch."  But presumably it can remain nearby and benefit from much larger traffic once the library is built.

I did find it a bit odd that they announced the location (finally) because they had always said they didn't want to announce it before securing title to the land, in order not to get stuck paying inflated prices.

Many of the news outlets reported a similar story.  Here are the key points from the CBC story (which features a nice photo of the current hideous brutalist library jammed into a corner downtown):

• Jan Harder, the councillor for Barrhaven and chair of the library board, said it plans to ask the city for $26 million to go toward buying the land.
• The library's board said it plans to build a new $180-million library building in the city block bordered by Albert, Lyon, Bay and Slater streets.
• Harder said the board was hoping to have the doors to the new building open by 2014.

Here's more info from the Citizen

• at least 300,000 square feet
• the library would likely be a building of about six storeys
• the city would seek a deal with the CS Co-op, which owns most of the land, and other smaller owners
• there would be lots of room in the block of land to also build offices, stores and apartment housing.

The only thing that worries me in an otherwise positive commentary article "It's more than books" is the idea that this might be a so-called world-class iconic building.  Please people.  Stop trying to redo Bilbao.  It's been done.  Just build a nice, airy, light, functional maintainable building.  One that can handle Ottawa's extremes: -30°C winter with metres of snow, and +30°C summer.  One that can be a great gathering place for citizens, not just some tourist stop.

It is a shame that neither the library plan nor the transit plan are going to be ready in time for the current round of government infrastructure stimulus funding.

And in case you're like z0mg, $180 million dollars?! I will point out that that's less than the infrastructure money going into shiny asphalt roads in the Ottawa suburbs in a single round of stimulus funding (and just in case you think I'm ranting, the exact quote from the Citizen is "[part of the funding] will be spent on $192 million worth of road projects, including several new and bigger suburban roads.")

As I've said before, if you wondering why we have no great public buildings, it's because the money for them is all beneath the wheels of your tyres, in endless expensive ribbons of asphalt.

I've had a lot to say previously about the importance of a great central library:
July 22, 2008  the public library is for: the public
December 21, 2007  the central public library is a key civic space
August 25, 2007  America, land of the grand library

Comments

[Rachel]

I think the new location for the library is a great one. Light and airy would be such a change from the existing cement bunker. :)

I have to disagree about the green space being underused though. It is presently the Nanny Goat Hill Community Garden. At 80 plots it's the largest community garden in the downtown core. http://www.spcottawa.on.ca/ofsc/en/community_garden_network.asp

[Richard Akerman]

Hi Rachel, while I agree it's not unused, only about 1/4 of it is the garden. The rest is pretty empty green space.