Letter: Jones Library Expansion Project – It’s Time to Move On

The following letter was sent to the Amherst Town Council and the Jones Library Trustees on July 16, 2024.

It’s time for the Amherst Town Council and Jones Library leadership to tell our town that the plan to demolish a large part of our library and replace it with an even larger addition will not happen.  The original design for this, now about a decade old, no longer makes sense. That’s because its large and expensive footprint does not sufficiently acknowledge the changes in how information is collected by libraries and retrieved by its users who, much more often than before, are off site and don’t set foot in the building.  The COVID pandemic accelerated and highlighted those changes. Just consider how often we participate in official meetings and friendly gatherings via our home computers, and even read our daily and weekly newspapers this way.

The initial effort to bid this project resulted in just one, unacceptably large bid.  Because the Jones is now spending more than $500,000 on architects to “value engineer” the plans in anticipation of going to bid again in September, there are two other critical reasons to recognize that, rather than demolition and expansion, a “Plan B” repair is the only way to proceed.  

First, the designers charged with value engineering admit that to save money their revised plans will do two terrible things.  They will destroy significant, original, now historic, elements within the library.  And they will eliminate planned improvements that were intended to meet energy sustainability requirements.  Amherst residents cannot want these things to happen.

Second, those very changes will cost the Jones at least $2 million in historic preservation grants the Jones planned to receive, that they now know they will not receive.  Amherst taxpayers will have to make up that loss. 

The Jones Library is not the only library in this three-college town, where so many of us use our campus libraries first.  It has a special role, sitting prominently in the town center and appealing to all of us but especially to those who don’t have that on-campus access.  We all want our public library to be able to serve everyone well.

But it cannot serve us well when its architectural integrity is destroyed, its energy sustainability is ineffective, it fails to anticipate changes in technology, and it costs taxpayers so much now and in future years that other key elements in Amherst, like our public schools, are deprived of the funds they need. 

It’s hard for public officials to admit that things have changed, and that their decisions must also change. I pray that the Amherst Town Council and Jones Library leadership will be brave enough to make the needed change.

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.