Letter: Weak Justification for Jones Library Demolition/Expansion

I’m going to go out on a limb here and give an answer to a question that I’ve been asking for a while.

My question is this. Why are the backers of the planned partial demolition and expansion of the Jones Library so determined to push this project forward, rather than make the long overdue repairs, that they’re willing to damage a historical landmark, rely on shaky promises of future funding, not file required financial disclosures to the town and the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners to conceal that fact, and ignore historical preservation laws and guidelines, resulting in putting the fiscal health of the town at risk when our services and schools are woefully underfunded?

I’m told that there’s a fair amount of ego involved, but that has never been a satisfactory answer, and I don’t believe that there is any venal corruption involved.

So I will take them at their word. The only real substantive reasons I’ve heard for this massive and expensive undertaking are the desire for a community center and its assorted functions, and for creating better “sight lines”. As for a community center, after the opening of the new elementary school, Wildwood school will be empty. It has everything anyone could want in a community center: classrooms, offices, parking, cafeteria, library, sports hall, playing fields, and more. If you want a teen space, a basketball court is close to essential. The coffee shop concession would surely be an interesting business proposition. Wildwood has more to offer as a community center than the expanded Jones ever could, and it’s already ADA compliant.

The sight lines argument is very worrisome to me. It’s a reflection of the current fashion in library design. The newly built libraries in Sunderland and Hadley are large open spaces. I’ve been to other libraries in large and small municipalities across the country, and where it is a new library, it inevitably has large open spaces. Older libraries not so much. The open space design is a modern innovation. The problem I have with exploding the Jones in this way is that no one knows how long this fashion is going to last, especially with computers increasingly taking the place of books and periodicals.

The open format for elementary school classrooms was all the rage in school design for a few decades, but it was eventually deemed a failure. Wildwood and Fort River were built with open classrooms, but after a few years room dividers were put in place when it was decided that the open plan didn’t work.

The open plan for libraries may or may not be a good idea. Only time will tell, but if we tear out the inside of the Jones we won’t be able to put it back. We’ll be stuck with a fashion choice that may not work out. Meanwhile, what we have in terms of layout is certainly good enough. Those of us who use and love the Jones know that it has served the town well for nearly 100 years and continues to do so. The adjectives I hear most often are “cozy” and “home-like”, not “cramped”. This new design is certainly shiny, but how long did the paint job on your ‘68 VW van stay shiny?

Lou Conover

Lou Conover is a resident of Amherst’s District `1