Geneva plan panel to review library design Thursday
If you have something to say about how tall the new Geneva Public Library will be, or how many on-site parking spaces it will have to provide, Thursday is the night to speak up.
The Geneva Plan Commission will have a public hearing about the plan at 7 p.m. at city hall, 109 James St.
The plan calls for constructing a three-story, 57,000-square-foot building on a two-acre site bounded by Campbell, Sixth, Franklin and Seventh streets. It is zoned for residential use, but designated for public/semi-public use in the city's Downtown/Station Area Master Plan. It is in the Geneva Historic District, but just outside the boundaries of a national historic district.
The library district has requested permission to build fewer parking spaces than city law would require. An institutional building as big as proposed must have at least 108 on-site spaces, according to city law. The library proposes 76 on site. It proposes restriping on-street parking spaces on Franklin, which are now diagonal, to perpendicular spaces. That would increase the parking there from 21 to 28 spaces.
The current library, at 127 James S, does not have a parking lot. It rents a lot several blocks away for employee parking.
The new building would be about 45 feet tall, which is 10 feet higher than allowed under law; but the first floor would be set about five feet below grade. The first two floors of the building would house library materials and programming; the third floor would contain its offices. The building and parking would cover about 71 percent of the site, which also exceeds the standards set in the zoning law. It would be about two feet shorter than the former Sixth Street School, which stood on the site from 1925 to 2015.
The library plans to use permeable pavers for the parking lot, with stormwater draining to an underground detention area. Vehicle access will be off Seventh.
A park district playground on the southwest corner of the site would be moved to the southeast corner.
If the commission approves the library district's requests, the plan would be forwarded to the city committee of the whole for review Feb. 12.
Library district voters agreed in April 2017 to borrow $21.8 million to build and furnish a new library.