Today we are talking about proposals A and B on the August 5th ballot – yes, we have an August ballot! – and plans for a new downtown library. With us, we have Eli Neiburger, director of the Ann Arbor District Library, to answer our questions and talk all things factual about the ballot measures, as well as share the possibilities of a new downtown branch.
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Transcript
Jess: Hello. Today we’re talking about Proposals A and B on the August 5th ballot. Yes, we do have an August ballot this year and plans for a new downtown library. With us today, Molly and I have Eli Neiberger, Director of the Ann Arbor District Library, to answer our questions and talk all things factual about the ballot measures, as well as share the possibilities of a new downtown branch. Eli, thank you so much for being with us today.
Eli: Hello. I’m thrilled af to be here. I’m thrilled af to be part of this conversation.
Molly: Awesome. I’m gonna do just a quick note about roles before we get started. So, as library Director, Eli is only talking the facts with us today. He’s not going to tell you how to vote. Jess and I will do that later, and you might be able to guess that he’s not going to tell you how to vote. So this is going to be similar to the episode we did with Missy Stoltz a little while ago talking about some sustainability stuff.
Molly: I am an elected official, and so I can advocate for a vote, but I want to make very clear that I’m speaking only for myself today. I’m not speaking for the library board. Although, I will point out that every member of the board has endorsed “yes” on A and B, and we’ve also voted repeatedly to move forward with this process with the city. So there’s a lot of public support coming for this from the library board, but today everything that comes out of my mouth is just me.
Molly: To get us started, there are two measures on the ballot in August, Proposals A and B, for the city of Ann Arbor. As far as I know, they are the only things on the ballot this summer, so it’s really easy, just yes on both.
Jess: According to Molly, not Eli.
Molly: According to me. And Jess maybe. Well, yes.
Jess: Yes, definitely me.
Molly: The two measures, one of them repeals the old Prop A from 2018, which was the center of the city charter amendment. This was an amendment to the city charter dictating the use of one square block of land and saying that all of the city owned land on that block needed to stay city-owned in perpetuity. And that the roof of the parking structure that’s directly next to the library should be a civic center commons and public park. That passed narrowly in 2018 and did not have any funding attached to it, and also didn’t address the challenges of putting a park on top of a parking structure. So seven years later, that parking lot is still just a parking lot. And so one of these ballot proposals would repeal that charter amendment and just take it back out of the city charter so that the city can do something else with that land.
Molly: And then the second proposal is what the city would do with the land, which is give it to the library, or sell it to the library for $1. It’s a transfer from the public to the public. And then it would be space that the library can use to build a new downtown library, not instead of the current site, but in addition to the current site, so that the library could work across both the current location of the downtown library and the parking lot next door.
Molly: Eli, tell us about the current downtown library building. What’s going on? Why do we need a new one?
Eli: Yeah, so the current downtown library first opened in 1957. There was some controversy about where it would be located, but the then president of the board of education – because the library was a part of the school district at that point – received assurances from the public that people would be willing to pay to park downtown to use the library, so they decided to locate it there instead of on Miller where West Park touches Miller, that was the land that they were thinking about using instead. So anyway, in 1957, basically the front part of the current downtown library opened. All of the masonry dates back to 1957, many of the fixtures, there are some parts in the HVAC system and in the plumbing that date back to 1957.
Eli: Barely 18 years later, we’d already outgrown that space. And the expansion of the first and second floors in the back opened in 1974, adding more space for the library, and then barely 18 years after that needed more space. And the third and fourth floor were built on top of the first and second floor in the back. Those were originally built with room to expand. Now the front part, the oldest part, was not built with any structure to hold up anything above it. So part of the issue is there’s no opportunities to add more built space on the site. Many years ago we did evaluate adding on an auditorium in the back where the staff parking lot was, but just like the compromises required for the past two additions, it’s not in the right place, you can’t get to it. You know where all of the passing through, the rest of the building, elevators, bathrooms, all that stuff. So it’s really that the capacity of the current building has been exhausted.
Eli: Alongside that it is suddenly showing its age. We’ve worked very hard to keep it clean and nice and habitable and well operating. But spring of 2024, we noticed that some of the masonry was starting to bulge suddenly in places that it hadn’t bulged before. So we had some contractors come out, open it up, and basically what we found inside was that the third and fourth floor addition from 1991 was not built as designed in the construction documents. There were improvised structural members, which you never like to see. There were tiebacks missing on the masonry. There was waterproofing missing like flashing that was called for in the drawings that was supposed to be there, which basically meant that water was getting inside the walls to places it wasn’t supposed to go, and that the structural members were starting to show a lot more corrosion than they should have at their age.
Eli: And it’s not to say that being inside the building is dangerous. It’s not. There’s no signs of settling or cracking or anything like that. But as I’ve said, what it’s like is when you buy a used car and you’re feeling really good about it because it’s only got 70,000 miles on it, and then you’re driving it home and a little piece of black tape falls off the odometer and reveals a four at the beginning that wasn’t there before. All of a sudden we’re realizing that basically the use of the library, the downtown library building, has really been exhausted. That’s just the building itself.
Eli: A big part of it’s how library service is constrained by the spaces in the current building, and it was certainly not a building that was built to have 6,000 people come through the door for a craft fair. If it did, it would have more toilets. It would have more elevators. It would have more ventilation, it would have more space, it would have more of everything. So in many cases, library service has grown beyond the capacity of the structure to deliver. And there’s a lot of little things and a lot of big things that come up every day when we’re trying to deliver library service to the public in the building. And it’s just at the point now where the board has determined, and the staff certainly agrees, that it is no longer responsible use of public dollars to continue making major investments in this structure when, first of all, you could invest millions and still have the exact same building with the exact same capacity problems. And secondly, we are not moving forward, right? We need to add capacity to the building, and that’s not possible with the current structure. So that’s why we’re at this point where something has to be done.
Jess: Yeah, you couldn’t see, but I was making the most horrified faces during the missing structural members part. So if you were also making those faces, I’m with you in spirit.
Eli: Yes. When I first saw the photos of the inside, there were very horrified faces of me and our facilities director, both of us. My background is in architecture and I’ve seen some shit, but you just never want to see that much divergence between the as-builts and the actual engineered drawings.
Molly: So the fact that the library has just outgrown the space and that we want to do so many more things than what the space allows has been true for a long time. But you have some numbers, just some numbers about utilization that I thought were really compelling in terms of like, what kind of numbers are we talking, how many people are coming through these doors? What kinds of events are we wanting to do?
Eli: Well, to our knowledge, there’s only one building near downtown Ann Arbor that has more people through it a year than the downtown library, and that’s Michigan Stadium. We have not been able to come up with another building that is as busy every day. You might say Angel Hall on campus, but as far as public buildings that are accessed by members of the community that aren’t affiliated with the university, nothing else comes close.
Eli: And a lot of where our capacity problems are coming from is the combination of two different trends. One is a lot more attendance to library events, and that’s both just increased interest in the library, but also the library over the past 20 years continuing to go in the direction of what the community turns out for, and really fine tuning the way that we develop our programming to be of maximum appeal to the population. And now we’re at the point where we often program against ourselves to break up the audience so that we can fit things into rooms. In the summer, we routinely plan things at multiple locations at the same time because if there’s only one thing going, we’ll be spilling out the ears with the patrons. So more people coming as well as the library needing more space to do its own programs.
Eli: So one thing that we looked at, and we talked about this at a board meeting back in November, was what does room use contention look like at the downtown library? Because in addition to more people coming to library events, there’s also a lot more interest in people using library spaces for their own events. Whether that’s just a meeting or a Zoom, or a yoga session, or bead work, or any kinds of different things, all kinds of people are using the library. Partially because we’ve made it a lot easier for them to book it. They can now see and make a reservation online.
Eli: So generally, when we did this analysis, we found that there were 83% of days when there was contention for space in the downtown library. So basically, most days, we have more demand for the spaces in the library than we have available. We turn away nonprofit and governmental bookers who already have a date in mind. Routinely, like every week, people are asking us, they’ve already decided they’re going to have their public engagement on this date, that they need to have that downtown library. We have zero space. All of our rooms are booked. Every single one of them.
Eli: Another thing that we’ve had to start doing, and this is a really sort of tangible example, is because the library doesn’t require registration, and that’s a very strategic choice because when you require registration, you turn away people before they even come to the event. So because we don’t require registration, we don’t often know how many people are gonna turn out. We have a guess, but we don’t always know. Some of our programming in the secret lab in the basement, which is our maker-y type of space, is so unpredictably packed that we’ve had to start booking the multipurpose room right next door just in case there’s overflow.
Eli: So we’re having to reserve spaces just in case we need them. If too many people turn out, because if we get 200 people turn out for book binding, which has happened, we don’t want to say to half of them, sorry we’re full, when we have another option. So in many cases it’s just demand for library service that is driving these capacity issues.
Eli: Then there’s just, we’ve developed our pipeline for partner and nonprofit programming to the point where we deliver a level of service that just isn’t available anywhere else in the community. You know, if you’re a nonprofit or a government entity and you’re looking to have a public event, we let you use the room for free and you get an AV Tech and you get promotion and you get all of our events logistics people on it, and all you need to do is fill out a couple of Airtable forms and your event goes off without a hitch.
It’s not like using a hotel, it’s not like using the university space, it’s not like using AAPS spaces. There’s nothing else like it in town, and all of our nonprofit and governmental partners know it. So as a result, we’ve got a great increase in demand for those sorts of spaces. And every one of those things is something that we want to make happen. Institutional partnerships, when you’ve got another government entity that is looking to do public engagement, and they want to do it at the library because that’s where the people are, and we don’t want to turn that away. We don’t want to say, no, you should go to a coffee shop or go to Morris Lawrence building at WCC again, which is a lot harder to get to.
Eli: That’s the other piece of it. Part of why we’re so interested in investing in the library on its current site is we’re across from one of the busiest transit hubs in the Midwest outside of Chicago. Washtenaw County is one of the only places where more than 5% of people use transit to get to work in the whole Midwest. While that’s a pathetically low percentage on the transit scale, at the same time, Blake is a busy place. Because of the layout of AAATA’s network, you can get to the downtown library from anywhere that they serve. As a result, it’s a really great place for institutions to do public engagement.
Eli: So all this together comes to form this every day, and every day we’ve got contention for our spaces, both over the course of the day and just whether or not it’s available. Then you get there and the room is packed and it’s hot and it’s sweaty and there’s not enough seating. And you know, our main venue, the lobbytorium, you’re sitting on plastic folding chairs. We see older people get up and lean back and stretch out their back because the chairs are uncomfortable. It’s just we’d like to be able to provide comfortable event attendance in addition to the event itself being great and all that stuff. There’s just not a mechanism to get the downtown library there in its current building. So the trends, you know, it’s great to see everything pointing upward, but it puts us in a challenging position to be able to provide a comfortable, successful, efficient library service in that current space.
Jess: You know, I really appreciate everything that you’re saying, Eli. I am an enthusiastic and frequent user of the library kind of all over town, and I have trouble booking rooms when I need to, and it’s usually even just the smaller ones, right? Like I need to have a meeting or a work session or something like that. So in some ways it’s reassuring to know that I wasn’t just doing it wrong, that lots of other people are also having the same idea as me. And I love leaving the house, but I really need a reason to do it. Library events are typically like the thing that’ll get me out of the house because I know it’s high quality programming. I know it’s going to be supported. I’ve spent a lot of time the last couple years in and out of a wheelchair, and I can rely on this being an accessible space and one that I can navigate, which has been really wonderful.
Jess: I don’t think I realized that it was 6,000 people, did I hear you say, at once for craft fairs? I mean, it definitely feels like it. When you’re there with you and your 5,999 closest friends just kind of sweating it out, but like for the tiny expo and things like that, it’s so worth it. It’s so busy.
Eli: It’s not just the attendees as well. You know, for Tiny Expo specifically, we turned away 200 vendors, that wanted to be a part of the show. Even after we expanded to the second floor, we didn’t have enough room for all the people who wanted to be a part of it. It hurts our librarian hearts to turn people away from library service, and so anytime that we find a way to increase capacity, we’re working to do that.
Jess: Speaking of increasing capacity and things I’m excited about: housing above a library. What?
Eli: Yes.
Jess: That’s the whole question. Housing above a library? Say more.
Eli: It’s been great that we started talking about this because we know that there is not necessarily strong support for a new bond that is funded by new tax revenue. So as we started exploring this, we did a feasibility study back in 2019 to see if it was possible, given our excellent location in the middle of one of Midwest’s housing hotspots, to fund the bonds of a new library with proceeds from air rights above the library and to leverage the value of the real estate and the need for the housing, and use that to fund the library as opposed to a new millage.
Eli: And so our approach is that once we find out what sites we’re working with (and we’ll come back to that), to offer air rights on top of the new library to have as much as 10 or 12 stories of housing upstairs, and that the proceeds from that would be what’s used to fund the library. This is something that’s a growing trend all across the US. Libraries of all sizes are partnering with developers or with other parts of their institution to develop housing above the library. Sometimes affordable, sometimes senior, sometimes market rate. There’s a little bit of everything. Many of the projects are done by municipalities or counties where the housing commission and the library are both part of that municipality or the county.
Eli: Like Chicago, they’re like, we need to build a new library; that’s part of our city government.
We need new housing; that’s also part of our city government. So it’s really one client. In our case as a district library, we are independent of any other government entity. So as a result, anyone else would be a partner with us. So it’s more like the library’s in control of the project and we would be selecting development partners going forward.
Eli: What I keep hearing from people as we’ve been talking about this is, who doesn’t wanna live above a library? You know, it’s such a great, exciting opportunity, and in many cases it even makes the amenity space’s requirements of the housing less because they’re on top of the library and it’s just a great combination. I’d love to have – waving a magic wand – a senior housing partner, an affordable housing partner, a workforce housing partner, a market rate partner, and having multiple different types of housing. And that’s also what we found in our polling, the community is very supportive of. There is very strong support for housing above the new library, and for it to be a tall building, above 70% support.
Eli: What we hear from that is people telling us what they want to see is a mix of housing types in there. So you know, that’s something that will come much later and we’ll talk about that, about what comes next in any scenario, but the possibility of having housing above the library. Just in terms of best use of the land in the center of downtown, I mean, this is like literally, this is where the tall buildings should go. And to have housing right adjacent to transit is such a great opportunity for the community and just to use that to bring such a landmark amenity to the community without new tax revenue is just a really exciting opportunity.
Molly: Yeah. I want to touch briefly on the funding piece, partly because this is a question I’ve been hearing a lot with all of the federal cuts, to help understand how the library is funded and where the different streams of money come from. So the Ann Arbor District Library has a perpetual millage, which means that we are really set up in an excellent position. We have money coming in. It may fluctuate depending on property values, but we know it’s coming. There’s no mayor that we have to battle. You know, in New York, the mayor keeps trying to take money from the library to give to the police. None of that. Our money is ours and we get to make that decision, and we have enough to successfully run all of our operations really smoothly, and we’ve built new branch libraries, and we’ve been able to do a lot with this money. But it’s never gonna be enough to build a new downtown branch at the level that we want, or even maybe not at the level that we want. And so that’s sort of where the money piece comes in.
Molly: I think this is one of the questions I’ve been answering a lot is, what about the federal money? Well, we don’t actually get any of that, and so we don’t have to worry about that piece. Is there anything else, Eli, about the funding?
Eli: It bears underscoring, with how it’s been in the news, even if AADL were receiving any IMLS money. That’s the Institute for Museum and Library Services, which is currently in the middle of a court battle about whether or not the president is able to remove it. AADL does not receive any money from IMLS directly anyway. A lot of the news headlines are like, libraries are toast. This is a grant program that helps a lot of little libraries. Most big libraries don’t get any money from it at all. So just like all the other tax funded entities in town, the library’s money comes from property taxes, across our whole district, and we have no federal component to our revenue.
Eli: Now, I will say that some of the scenarios, for example, affordable housing, that is usually made affordable through subsidies that come from the federal government. And in the absence of that, that changes some of the possibilities, because new housing only becomes affordable with subsidy. And that is a real challenge in the absence of a Department of Housing and Urban Development or equivalent sorts of organizations.
Eli: But overall, the library’s in a very strong financial position and in an excellent situation to be able to move forward with a project like this, both in terms of experience and capacity. We built all those branches in the past 20 years, all those buildings built since 2000, out of our existing funds. We have no debt. We are ready to move forward with a big project like this, and it’s a great opportunity.
Jess: There’s a lot that you’re saying, Eli, that’s really resonant. So I am fresh off of the Building Michigan Communities conference this week, which is affordable housing and Community and Economic Development. And there’s a lot of talk about the challenge of delivering housing affordability in every market, but especially thriving ones like ours. One of the things that funders, that developers, that housing service providers, that builders kept saying over and over and over again is that partnerships are progress. That we require multiple partners in any kind of given project in order for it to be successful for a lot of different reasons.
Jess: I heard something from a lender that actually kind of sparked a light bulb for me that they are looking to make the most amount of impact with the least amount of dollars. And if they can come into a project with multiple partners and say, well, we helped deliver on so many units of affordable housing by giving less money, but still being able to accomplish that, then they’re going to be more likely to pile into that project. And being able to come into a project with such a strong civic partner, such a strong public partner, or possibly multiple private partners, just based on everything that I was hearing this last week,
makes all of it sound more feasible. Even when saying affordable housing and Ann Arbor together also often sounds like an oxymoron.
Jess: I also appreciate what you said a couple of minutes ago about support for a tall building in downtown Ann Arbor and on the library site being so strong. The number that you cited over 70% is actually really consistent with the affordable housing millage. That one was approved by voters by about 78%. And to understand that it’s not just affordable housing but mixed income housing that the voters are supporting, that feels really powerful to me.
Eli: We’ve seen that there’s strong support for the whole idea, the notion that the library needs to be replaced and that this is a place to do it. We see very strong support in the library’s polling, which is available on the library’s website, under About Us, Board Reports.
Molly: We’ve now talked a lot about what we are envisioning for the housing above the library, but we haven’t talked yet about what would go into a new library, and that stuff gets really exciting. I’d love to hear you talk about that for a little bit, Eli.
Eli: Sure. The main pinch point is not square footage, mostly because the current downtown library has a lot of unusable space because of the way that it’s three buildings glued together. There are fire egress hallways that are completely unusable except in the event of a fire. There’s the elevator lobbies, which are pretty dead space. There’s lots of little rooms and corners that we don’t actually need. Housing the collection is the easy part, that’s not something that we need a lot more space on. It’s not something we’re terribly pinched on, especially since we’re seeing collapse in demand for DVD and Blu-ray, and we will continue to have them as long as people are coming to check them out. But books are still growing a little bit. We are not seeing that anymore in disc based media, as you can imagine. I mean, it takes up a big footprint.
Eli: So what we really need is more space for people and particularly more space for events and meetings and things like that. We talked at the top of the show a little bit about the lobbytorium, our improvised large event space. Just this week that we’re recording this, we had Jocelyn Benson on Monday. Today we have Chasten Buttigieg. And these are events that turn out big audiences in Ann Arbor and people are hanging over the rafters to watch these events. When we had Judge John Hodgman back in the fall, we were dealing with angry people who couldn’t get a ticket for weeks after the tickets had gone up for free, just weeks and weeks.
Eli: We could really use another 200 seats and there’s no way to do that in the current lobby. Also every time we do that, we have to set it up and take it down, set it up and take it down. Setting up the chairs, setting up the stage, taking down the stage, hanging the lights, moving the lights down, moving the lights up, all that kind of stuff. Moving the DVDs and the Blu-rays from the south side of the lobby to the north side of the lobby and back and forth and back and forth. There’s so much reconfiguration involved, associated with us making do with the space that we have. It would be great if we had a 500 seat auditorium that was just an auditorium, and particularly if it was designed in such a way that the access to the middle of the auditorium was at grade. So when people are coming in in mobility devices or have any sort of a challenge at all for them to be able to come in and go right to the middle of the auditorium as opposed to coming in at the top or having to be in the front row. That’s getting into design a bit, but our building is way pre-ADA, and it shows. There’s a lot of little things that we’ve done to try to make it as good as we can. In 2016, when we redid the front entrance, we added ramps that far exceed what’s required under ADA. But one of the biggest differences, and this is just the thing we deal with every day, is I’d like to have more than one elevator in a public building. And the one elevator that we have is not even big enough for some types of mobility devices, and it’s enclosed, and I would really prefer, as a person who manages a public library, for that elevator to have a lot better visibility. There’s a camera in there, so we keep it safe, but it would be great if we had a pair or maybe even three elevators that you could see into from all parts of the building. That would be a really nice thing to have.
Eli: Similarly, when we do unload the lobby for a large event like Tiny Expo or Record Store Day, or Fiber Arts Expo, or A2CAF, or our new show, Anime Arbor, or our other new show, Dead Media Day, we got all kinds of things coming. When we plan for those, we need to have a place to put the stuff that normally goes in the lobby, and there’s nowhere to take those big shelves that are currently occupying the lobby. So just to be able to have a large floor for large events that are not auditorium events, but one big floor with a couple of big meeting rooms attached to it that the library can book when we know we got a big show and we roll the collection into those meeting rooms and completely are able to clear the show itself. Just having a building that is built around the way we operate as opposed to the way that libraries operated in the 1950s, which is really what we’re dealing with at the moment. So we need a lot more meeting rooms than we have.
Eli: Another thing that we’ve been talking about is where the staff points are. It’s an important thing for libraries to have good sight lines to be able to see everything that’s going on, for the desks to be in the right place, both for the staff and for the patrons. And a big part of that is we’d like to be able to add like little suites and bookable rooms where you have a piece of equipment that’s in the room, and maybe you’ve been through an orientation before you can book that piece of equipment. Maybe it’s a Serger, maybe it’s a 3D printer, maybe it’s a small letterpress rig, maybe it’s a laser cutter. You know, all kinds of different devices that require some orientation that we would like to allow better access to than we’re able to do right now. Maybe it’s a recording studio. You know, we have a recording studio up on the fourth floor, but because of where it’s located and who can access it, you need six weeks notice to schedule it. And it’d be nice for us to be able to offer better access to that. So, you know, seeing a set of rooms where there’s cabinets that lock and unlock, depending on what equipment you want to have access to, that would be great. But really just more meeting rooms and more study rooms, better visibility into all of them, more and better places to sit, as well as good opportunities for affiliated businesses.
Eli: This is something we’re just starting to get into, the library’s got, right now as we record this we’re taking applications for what we call the lobby shops, the space that formerly the friends of the library occupied. When we opened our warehouse out on Parkland Plaza, we offered the friends of the library space there and they jumped at the chance. So both they were able to have a much larger shop than they had in their old space in the lobby, as well as they have a lot more sorting space than we were able to give them in the basement. So they are now well established and doing great out at our facility on Parkland Plaza, and they’re now doing more business on one Saturday a week than they were being open five, six days a week. So that’s great to see. It works better for them, all that stuff.
Eli: We’ve divided their former space into three suites and we’re offering it for extremely low rents. And we’ve already got, I think, 20 or 30 applicants for that space, and some of them are really cool. So we’re looking forward to bringing some really special little retail opportunities that would never happen through the commercial real estate market, never, ever, ever, ever. And the library’s in a position to say, Hey, this isn’t actually a lease, this isn’t a rental space. We’re going to allow you a license to use this space, and in return, you’ll pay a small amount for it. Where the small suites are a hundred bucks a month, the big one’s $250. And all kinds of things become possible through that.
Eli: So having a building, and that’s partially why we’re doing that now, so we can get some experience with that before we get to the design phase of a new building. Because we’d really like to build a building around some opportunities like that. The Salt Lake City Library has this wonderful walk through kind of an urban street inside the building that stays open after the library is closed, it’s lined with shops on both sides. And to have that sort of retail opportunity inside the space just makes being in the library nicer and gives us the opportunity to provide some opportunity for the community that doesn’t exist otherwise.
Molly: We’ve been hearing forever about getting a cafe in the downtown library. People really, really want a cafe. Westgate is so popular. People love having the cafe in the building. But you looked into what it would take to make a cafe happen In our current building.
Eli: Yes. Right before the pandemic, we were in talks with a couple different vendors to look at opening a cafe right now where the graphic novels are. Which seemed like a good idea at the time, but now how we use the Lobbytorium so much, there would’ve been like baristas behind the presenters. That wouldn’t have made a lot of sense, so it’s good that didn’t work out. But even at that point, the big problem is drains, because the sewage is very close to the surface of the street at that point, which is why we have so many sewage problems at the downtown library. We haven’t even gotten into the sewage problems.
Molly: We’re not supposed to talk about the sewage problems.
Eli: Yeah, that’s fine with me, I prefer not to, less is more. But as a result, in 2019, it was going to be about $600,000 of plumbing work to be able to add a drain for a cafe in the lobby. Water lines are easy, it’s the drains that are hard, and so not a realistic thing for us to consider investing in. But absolutely, I mean, Westgate is as busy as the downtown library on a slow day. They’re very similar to each other. Westgate is never as busy as the downtown library on a busy day. But a slow day at the downtown library and a slow day at Westgate are about the same, which is 13- to 1400 people through the door. And again, that’s a slow day at the downtown library, 1300 people. So that’s an example of the sort of thing we’d love to see, and all sorts of opportunities that the current structure doesn’t present itself to.
Molly: So this really brings us back to the ballot questions and what it is that folks are going to be voting on on August 5th. So, I talked at the top a little bit about what’s actually on the ballot. Why are two questions on the ballot?
Eli: So my understanding, and this is the city’s decision, it’s the city’s ballot questions, but my understanding is that part of the state law about ballot questions is that you can’t compound your questions. If you’re asking things, you have to ask them separately, and that if they are intertwined, the mechanism to do that is to tie-bar them together, which is what has happened with these two ballot questions. Each one has a clause in the ballot language that says that adoption of it is contingent upon the other one passing. So they do need to both pass in order for either of them to go into effect according to the ballot language. And they are two questions because of the vagaries of state law around ballot questions. One of them is about transfer of property, the other is an edit to the charter, and those two things have to be two different questions.
Molly: And what happens if they don’t pass?
Eli: What we’re waiting to find out with this is whether or not the library is developing a new library on the current site or on the current site and the surface of the garage together. That’s really the question. We don’t wanna invest any sort of design work into this project until we know what the site is, because this is a huge difference between what the projects would look like. However, one of the things that we know from our feasibility study is that the more potential for housing there is on the site, the better library we can get out of it. Because the more margin there is in the project, and that’s where the money to build a library comes from. So a bigger site equals a better library, it’s really the key option here.
Eli: We can make it happen on the current site. It’s just one thing that we’ve been dealing with for a long time is which direction should it face, and the lot next door has been a question mark for a long time, and to the point where we don’t know if the front door should face that way or not. So really having a situation where the library knows what’s going to happen on both sites, because we are the developer for both sites in terms of what happens on the ground floor, puts us in a much stronger position to build a facility that will be successful for decades into the future. You’re not just building something just for now. We hope that this building will last another 70 to a hundred years. And that’s a big question. So really what these ballot questions will settle is whether there’s a new downtown library on the current site or whether there’s a new downtown library on both sites. In either case with housing above.
Eli: And one thing, as we start to think about the design, and you think about how important it is when you’re having a big show, for it to be all on one floor, you could make the entire site of the current downtown library one floor, it’s still not big enough. So if we have both sites, and you can have one long floor that spans over Library Lane and connects all the way above the ramp down into the parking garage and then comes all the way to William Street. That’s most of the library program, aside from the auditorium and the kids’ room and stuff like that. So you can have one huge floor very suitable for library events. I also want to stress it would be used for library events. Sometimes there’s concern that it’s some sort of a place that people could rent out and have private events? No, this is for library events. Tiny expo’s free to get into, tiny expo’s free to table at, which is kind of unheard in that industry. We are building this space, or hoping to build this space for the library’s own uses. There’s plenty of other spaces around town for other sorts of activities. This is really all about the library’s own use because we can’t get these spaces when we need them.
Jess: So I’d like to ask a little bit about what next. And the first one is, what happens if both don’t pass or if one passes but not the other?
Eli: If one passes but not the other, then they both didn’t pass. Because they’re tie-barred, neither one will take effect unless they both pass. So if they don’t pass, then we start the process of selecting partners and issuing an RFP for a project on the current site. If it does pass, then we start the process of selecting partners and developing an RFP for a project that spans both sites. That’s the next step, and you can imagine how it’s not something we wanna start working on until we know what the footprint is.
Jess: I’ve been in the public sphere long enough and a development groupie, let’s say, long enough, that I understand that development is slow and public development is much slower. So I’m curious, I understand that you’re not wanting to kind of put any cart before the horse in terms of order of operations of what you’re doing. But I’m wondering if you have any sense of timing in terms of after the election, like what happens next and when. I’m not asking for, like when do we get to move into the building because I understand there are many if-thens, but like what’s next?
Eli: So there’s a couple different steps that will all start once this question is settled one way or the other. One is the development of an RFP for development partners. So that’s something where the library would develop a public RFP that is released publicly. The responses to the RFP would be public. The selection of those partners would then be public. That is easily a one to two year process between the development of the RFP, how long it is out, and then the assessment of it and all that sort of stuff.
Eli: Parallel to that is a revision of the library program once we know which sites we’re working with. We have a library program, it was developed in 2018. And just for listeners who are not architecture nerds, a program is a text document that describes the requirements of a building. So it’s like saying we need a building that has X many square feet of auditorium and X many square feet of office space, and so many toilets and so many, etc., etc. We have a relatively recent document, but as we all know, 2018 was a long time ago, so we would want to do a revision of that document based on how library services have grown in the interim. That can happen parallel to the development of the RFP.
Eli: Once an RFP is released, once we’ve chosen our development partners, the next step is settling on a development deal about the actual agreement that would govern the development of the site. That is its own long process. And parallel to that is likely to be the selection of an architecture and design and engineering team. We don’t want to do that part of it until we know who our development partners are. And once we have the development partners, now the idea is that the library’s in full control of this process.
The library would have a majority ownership stake on this, and that the library would be driving the boat, so to speak. But we want to make sure that our tenants are also part of that conversation. So selection of the architect would happen next.
Eli: And parallel to all of that is us finding a place to have a temporary downtown library through the project, which is a multi-year project. Because what we probably need to do is kick somebody out of their space (Graduate School of Architecture) so that we have something. I’ve had my eyes on that space for so long. There’s a building right across from Blank Slate. It would be a dynamite temporary downtown library and a much better use for that space than watching the poor graduate students slaving over their desks. So hopefully the architecture school has plans because we’re coming for that space. But you know, that aside, there’s a number of other retail spaces that are much smaller that we could look at, but that is easily a one to two year process just to think about what the temporary downtown library is. Because we are not going to attempt to operate library service on the current site during a construction project. We did that when we built the 1974 addition and when we built a 1991 addition, and our institutional memory is very clear, never again. We want to make sure that we aren’t asking patrons to enter a construction site to visit the library. It’s also a lot cheaper if you don’t try to stage around keeping your building open. All that together means there’s gotta be a temporary downtown library throughout the project. It needs to be downtown. It needs to have a little bit of everything that the downtown library has. Some collections, hold pickups, some computers, bathrooms, a small program space, you know, a little kids room, all that kind of stuff. It needs to be like a micro downtown library, and that’s its own project. All that said, I would anticipate that we are hopefully breaking ground on a project within three years. That’s kind of the goal. Then you’re looking at probably three years of construction because it’s a big project, right? So in an ideal world, as compared to this one, about six years total time project. It could easily stretch out from there because also in that mix, this is a project that is dependent on the economy, and we could have all the pieces together and all the ducks in a row, and we’re then waiting for economic conditions to be favorable. One thing we absolutely know is that libraries and public buildings are good things to build in a recession. Because often you might have funding when other organizations don’t, and the trades and the construction industry often is looking for work. So if there’s a recession, it doesn’t mean that this isn’t something to move ahead with, but that might affect our partners’ cash flow, all that kind of stuff. In an ideal world, I would hope to be cutting the ribbon within six-ish years, but it could easily stretch a few years more than that, depending on what, what gets hung up along the way. Was that vague enough?
Jess: That was actually more specificity than I expected, so I appreciate that
Molly: No, that was great. So before we move on to like our final closing question, Eli, I just wanna ask if there’s anything else you wanted to make sure our listeners heard from you that we haven’t asked you about that we haven’t had a chance to talk about?
Eli: There’s one thing that I keep hearing over and over again when people talk about this project and they start asking questions, and what they keep saying is, it better be awesome, right? And I love hearing that because we are up to the task. But I think this is the big thing: people love coming to the library because of what happens inside. Nobody comes to the downtown library because of the building. Nobody. Like that does not happen. Many great cities have libraries that’s the first place you take your out of town visitors to show it off. And I think Ann Arbor deserves one of those. Being able to have something that is an inspiring architectural landmark, a place that you bring guests, a place that you love to go, just to be in the space regardless of what’s happening. All that is a wonderful opportunity and something that the community is clearly hungry for by the way, they grabbed me by the lapels and insist on it being an amazing building.
Those people who have visited Traverwood at one end and Westgate at the other, all of our other branches, they’re much nicer spaces than anything we’re currently able to develop in the somewhat institutional nature of the current downtown building, and for us to be able to start with a blank slate and bring something that people wanna put on t-shirts and postcards and things like that and show off their library and wear their library pride. I mean, I always joke about it because of course with summer game a couple years ago we had the downtown library on a t-shirt, but it was the downtown library getting up and walking away, right? And that’s sort of the situation, in which people want the downtown library on a t-shirt is where it’s strolling off into the sunset.
Molly: I talk about the new library with my kids a lot, because I spend a lot of time working on this. And one of them, Westgate is their favorite branch. And one of them said, with like the most deepest sincerity, but it almost sounded so, I don’t, so sincerely said to me, can you imagine a new downtown library as nice as Westgate? Yes. And I was like, baby, we can do so much better. Westgate is wonderful. But there’s so much space between Westgate and what we’re capable of.
Eli: Yeah. Imagine what we can do with an architect that works for the library as opposed to for the mall. That’s the results we get working through a third party, let alone… Well, and we’ve seen it: Pittsfield, and Mallets and Traverwood. All those projects were library projects that we ran from top to bottom, and excellent buildings that are very well used, beautiful buildings, too.
Jess: And to that point, I studied architecture as well, Eli, and I studied it here, and I was off camera and you made me spit water, so thank you for that, when you said we’re coming for the architecture building. Because I’m thinking about my friends and colleagues and how warmly they’re gonna receive that. Anyway, we studied AADL in school, we studied Traverwood as an example of parametric design. We studied Mallet’s Creek as an example of sustainable design. And I didn’t realize until well after school how special it was to be able to get to study local examples of libraries as exemplars of things that we were studying. And I’ve been thinking a lot about the potential for a new library and I am hungry for a new downtown library to get taught as an example of all the things a library can be. Not just an example of a good building, but also of a good community partner in terms of providing more space and more housing.
And I just long for that as somebody who came to this town to study buildings, I long for the library to be a building that people study.
Eli: And there’s no humble way to say this, but we know that AADL sets the standard for library service in many areas. There’s nothing like the summer game, there’s nothing like our archives program. There’s nothing like Westgate. And those are very unusual and unique spaces, and there’s nothing like the utilization that our library enjoys from the community. And so for us to have that opportunity to do that for downtown libraries as well. Because while there have been all these housing projects above libraries, they’ve all been above branch libraries. Nobody has yet integrated your central downtown library with housing above. And I think it’s a great opportunity to break new ground and bring an incredible amenity to the people of Ann Arbor while also meeting all other kinds of needs that the block really should be trying to serve.
Molly: That feels like a great way to close. Eli, thank you so much for joining us today. We’re gonna have a lot of information and links in show notes. I have to plug the campaign for these ballot measures before we go. The campaign committee is called Supporters of the Downtown Library and the website is just supportaadl.com. And at that website you can sign up to volunteer, you can get a yard sign. The yard signs are super cute. We also are welcoming donations to the campaign of any size to help pay for those yard signs and cover all of the work that the campaign is doing to get out the vote and make people aware of this opportunity for the library and for the city. Thank you again, Eli, for joining us.
Eli: Thank you for the opportunity and thanks to everyone for using your library.
Molly: Oh yeah. I didn’t write like an ending.
Jess: You are all welcome to come check out past episodes and transcripts at our website, annarboraf.com. Keep the conversation going with fellow Ann Arbor AFers on Blue Sky, at the A2 council hashtag and Facebook and Ann Arbor Housing for All, which is our Facebook group. And hey, if you wanted to send us a few dollars at ko-fi.com/annarboraf to help us with hosting Molly and I always appreciate it. We are your co-hosts. I’m Jess Letaw and that was Molly Kleinman. And as always we are thankful for our producer, Scott Trudeau. Our theme music is Ida Know by Grapes. Get informed, get mad and get involved. It’s your city.
Molly: Supportaadl.com