Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Some Conceptual plans for the new library

I did manage to make it to the meeting, and I took some pictures of a few of the PowerPoint slides showing some of the conceptual plans.
This image is looking north at the library with greenspace behind it towards the Prairie Heights subdivision.

Here's an overall interior shot.


A couple of more detailed interior plans. One of the best ideas shown was combining the cafe (which hasn't done well at the Fairmount Library) with the Friends of the Library Bookstore, which is staffed by volunteers. This would allow different options on providing food service.

Here's the overall site plan. A couple people seemed concerned about the fact that there's only one driveway to the parking lot, but as I pointed out at the meeting, the Fairmount branch only has one as well. Sorry about the images being somewhat angled; I didn't sit facing the correct screen. I'd imagine the Times will have a better image in the morning, or even post the entire PowerPoint.

Update, 9-17 6:30AM
Here's the link to the QCTimes article about the meeting, which quotes Art McGivern without mentioning that he's part of the development on the other side of Eastern that will benefit from this library. I sure hope he's generous with the donations to Friends of the Library. After the meeting I drove around the Prairie Heights area, and saw that the first house looks occupied, and at least 2 others are under construction now. The baseball diamonds and their parking lots look to be finished as well.

Also, if you don't like backing up a quarter of a mile or doing a lot of 3 point turns, be careful which streets you cruise down in that area. For example, 67th Street west of Eastern does not yet go anywhere, or have a place to turn around. A couple of streets within the subdivision also end rather abruptly. Seems like they should make sure the Road Closed signs stay in place instead of laying off in the weeds.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Free admission to the Fej Petting Zoo is going... no mention?

Anonymous said...

We would be better off contracting with the Bettendorf Library to run Davenports Library system.

Anonymous said...

The bettendorf library is very inferior to the davenport library system in several respects.

1) The davenport library has good special collections and is researcher friendly. Most of the information about bettendorf that has been archived isn't even kept at the bettendorf library but at davenport's main street location.

2) The bettendorf library has a much more limited mission than davenport. From serving a large low-income population to working as a good research library davenport has to devote more of its resources to the variety of services it offers.

3) Even though bettendorf gets more dollars/visitor to its library, davenport serves more people, more effectively. Bettendorf has limited to community outreach programs that match the dpl's attendance at its events.

Anon 9/18/2008 1:56,
thought you'd spew your ignorance into the void? I hope others reading aren't taken in.

QuadCityImages said...

Like a lot of other things, Bettendorf has an easier time because they're not a real city. They are a suburb, and only have to perform suburb-type services, while "the big city" gets to take care of the rest. Fire protection, sewer treatment, cultural amenities, you name it.

Anonymous said...

The changes that QCI refers to about the cafe are just to make it more like the success in Bettendorf. It wasn't like this was anything new. I have lived in Davenport for 25 years, been to the library a thousand times and to call the library user friendly is a joke.Davenport has long suffered from poor library administration. The citizens of Des Moines were estatic to see K.Runge leave their new library and return home to the board of the Quad City Times.Whatabush or whatever her name is is no better. These people might be qualified to run a stockyards. The Bettendorf library does a lot of community work as well as being a friendly place to visit. Maybe just a notch above QCI's intellectual interests. So it be.