City of Santa Cruz holds open house to discuss the future of the library

Major changes could be heading to the Downtown Santa Cruz library.

Not only is the city thinking of moving it, but also changing the type of building and what it holds.

The library on Church Street has been around since 1968 and according to library director Susan Nemitz, it shows.

“The roof leaks, one of the pipes broke over the DVD collection,” Nemitz said.

Just some of the many building issues they say they’ve had.

That’s why the idea of moving the library further south in the downtown area will be brought to the Santa Cruz City Council, but this relocation would be different.

Instead of just a brand-new library building, the library would be one part of a multi-purpose building.

One local example is the Watsonville library. It shares a building with government and non-profit offices along with a parking garage.

It’s the parking aspect that has many Santa Cruz residents fired up.

“I do not support the projections that estimate that for the business to thrive in Santa Cruz, we need this parking structure,” said one Santa Cruz business owner.

“To me the ideal is to have a library dedicated as a library and not tucked under some multi-story structure next to automobiles,” said Santa Cruz resident Grant Wilson.

Still, many are also in support of the mixed-use project.

“If you do it right by having the library as a street scape, parking behind it I think you combine two different goals of the city in an economical way,” said another Santa Cruz resident.

The proposal is likely to go to the city council on August 28th. From there the council will decide on if they want to move forward on the design.

The library director is encouraging Santa Cruz residents to write to local city council members with their thoughts on the proposed project.