Letter: The Jones Library – How Much Is Too Much?
The new Greenfield Public Library. Photo: greenfieldpubliclibrary. org
Amherst resident Roman Handlen, in a Guest Column in the August 8 edition of the Daily Hampshire Gazette, criticizes the “rhetoric” of people like me who prefer a repair and improvement of our Jones Library rather than the proposed demolition and expansion project that failed to receive an acceptable bid last spring. He says it’s “irrelevant” that “many access the [Amherst] library’s resources from home” and cites the new Greenfield Public Library as an example of what he’d like the Jones to be.
It’s hardly “irrelevant” that so many users have begun to access library resources from afar, because that is how storage, retrieval and access to information is evolving. Any library renovation must recognize these changes.
Unlike Amherst, Greenfield’s library is in a community that does not have two distinguished private colleges and a flagship state university whose campus libraries serve a large part of the resident population. Amherst’s year-round population is the same as Greenfield’s, yet at 48,000 square feet our library is already almost twice the size of Greenfield’s which is 26,800 square feet. South Hadley, a college town with a similar population, serves its community with a new 23,000 square feet LEED certified library.
Mr. Handlen advocates a project that will demolish a 30 years old addition and replace it with an even bigger addition that will bring the size of Amherst’s library to 63,000 square feet. No wonder it’s unaffordable.
The Jones Library’s architects are now engaging in “value engineering” as they try to prepare more economical designs for the Jones rebid in September. Although Mr. Handlen doesn’t seem to care, the new plans are sacrificing unique historic elements that have distinguished the Jones. They also ignore the importance of environmental sustainability. And they will be proposing a library that will still be much too large to be affordable.
A reasonable, affordable repair and renovation project could prepare the Jones to serve Amherst residents well for the next 50 years. That’s something that’s economically possible. It’s too bad that Mr. Handlen doesn’t understand this.
Ken Rosenthal
Ken Rosenthal lives on Sunset Avenue in Amherst. He was Chair of the Zoning Board of Appeals and of the former Development and Industrial Commission, and was a member of the Select Committee on Goals for Amherst. He was a founder of Hampshire College and its first Chief Financial Officer.
Shouldn’t our main concern be the additional maintenance costs (and much-sooner-than-planned system replacement costs) that a “value-engineered” Jones Library will require in future years?
Won’t any short-term savings “value-engineering” promises to offer the Town of Amherst capital budget simply shift to our operating budget in future years?
Yet another example of a “penny-wise, pound-foolish” financial “two-step”…?
Ken and Rob, I agree with everything you’ve stated and don’t consider any of it minutiae. Meanwhile, to help undercut the red herring thrown by Mr. Handlen, the Greenfield Public Library cost $20M, half of which was covered by an MBLC grant, and it replaced a structure originally built in 1797.
Hello Rita: I just want to reassure anyone reading this: yes, the new Greenfield Public Library has replaced the old one but the old one has not been demolished, thank God! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leavitt%E2%80%93Hovey_House
Greenfield cost $19.5 million as opposed to $46.1+ million for the Jones.
Greenfield chose to move library operations out of the historic Leavitt-Hovey House which is on the National Register of Historic Places, and build a new library building nearby.