Sunday, April 5, 2009

Prop 5 in Profile: New Loussac Library entrance


As everyone knows by now what with all the illegally placed campaign signs lining up the roads across town, everyone and their mother will be on this Tuesdays ballot for mayor. But the mayoral race isn't all that is up for vote next week. Besides our 1600 candidates running for City Hall, Prop 5 for library funding is among the more interesting props up for vote. Besides proposing a new library branch for Downtown (which is awesome), the proposition also seeks funding to totally redo the entrance of the Loussac Library. Gone would be the stairs, the skybridge connecting to the Alaska Collection, and the drive through/drop off. In place of the stairs would be a ground level atrium with a large curtain of glass smartly facing towards the south while the road that goes through the library will no longer connect to Denali but would instead become a circular drop off surrounded by a new plaza that better links the library to the fountain.

Renderings of the new library proposals (PDF)

As for my mayoral predictions, this Tuesday will only be the filtering of the candidates. Failing to reach the 45% threshold, expect Croft and Sullivan signs to remain.

2 comments:

Adam said...

I actually really like the designs for the redeveloped library entrance, I think it just wasn't a good time to try for a project like this. There is still much uncertainty regarding the economy and I think people were just cautious with this proposition.

marcus said...

Yep. I suspect now is not a good time to put leisure type bonds on the ballot. Among the four city bonds (3 through 6), I'm not surprised in retrospect that roads and transit passed while parks and a new entrance failed.