The Library serves as the only place where a person can receive assistance to get an email account, create an updated resume, seek GED completion, attend English as a Second Language classes, apply online for employment, and more…
— from the Ruby M. Sisson Memorial Library Foundation Building Campaign ‘FAQs’ document, 2021
Had a pleasant interview at our public library earlier this month, with Cindi Galabota, Director of the Ruby Sisson Memorial Library Foundation.
Here’s a view of the library, taken from the ‘Town to Lakes Trail’ adjacent to Highway 160, standing near the Pagosa Springs Elementary School. The library is the brown-roofed building near the center of the photo, off in the distance. The vacant land in the foreground previously belonged to the Whittington family, back when they owned the Springs Resort. It now belongs to the Library District.
Like many ambitious projects in Archuleta County, the Town to Lakes Trail, shown in this photo, remains mostly a dream — a proposed 4-mile-long walking and biking trail connecting downtown Pagosa with the uptown Pagosa Lakes area. At the moment, this one-block stretch of concrete trail extends only to the elementary school, and then stops.
The Sisson Library, meanwhile, is not merely a dream. It’s a fully functioning public library… one that I’ve been visiting maybe once a week, as the pandemic subsides, to check out interesting books that help me keep my sanity, such as it is, intact. Things in 2020 were a bit sketchy for the Library, however, and during much of last year, it provided only curbside service. It’s now back to full service.
But even a fully functioning, tax-funded library can have dreams, and over the past couple of years, the Library District board and library staff — and the supportive non-profit Library Foundation — have been brainstorming a major renovation project.
The basic ideas behind the renovation and expansion were presented to the Town Council back in June, by Library Director Meg Wempe and Foundation Director Cindi Galabota.
The basic idea involves raising $4 million dollars. Would the Town Council like to make a contribution? The Council listened and offered comments, but not money — at least, not for the moment.
I sat down with Ms. Galabota a few days later, to get more details. To be completely honest, I was more interested in what the Library was not planning to do, than what they planned to do.
Like, for example, that big vacant parcel, west of the Library. What was the plan for that?
The Ruby Sisson Memorial Library, at the corner of South 8th Street, came into existence in 1989, following the creation of the property-tax-funded Upper San Juan Library District. Then in 2005, the library undertook a major expansion project, doubling its footprint to about 7,300 square feet. That expansion project added a large, well-lit ‘reading room’, an enclosed space dedicated to children, and a ‘teen’ area, and more staff office space. (The children’s room later became a multi-purpose space.)
But perhaps the most visible change was the addition of two banks of Internet-enabled desktop computers. In 2005, the world was seriously headed in a digital direction, and the library wanted to keep up with progress. Or maybe, needed to keep up.
The next big change came in the autumn of 2019, when a generous donor gifted the District with the 1.8-acre parcel immediately west of the library building, ‘in memory of Margaret Wilson’. (Ms. Wilson had been an avid supporter of the Library.) The donated parcel had increased the library’s property footprint from about 1.6 acres to about 3.4 acres, and served as an inspiration to the Library Board and the Library Foundation, to take a serious look at another facility expansion.
Unfortunately, the donated parcel has drainage and terrain issues. But you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Usually.
Denver-based Ratio Architects were hired to develop ideas for a possible expansion, based on interviews with local stakeholders. The final draft of the proposed expansion project relocates the entrance, and added about 4,000 square feet of indoor space, including:
- a ‘multipurpose room’ to accommodate up to 150 people
- a dedicated ‘children’s room’
- a dedicated ‘teen/tween’ room
- a ‘collaborative/maker space’
The final concept from Ratio Architects shows a fairly extensive outdoor space located between the expanded building and Highway 160. That space, and a larger parking area, encroach slightly onto the Margaret Wilson gift property, but most of the 1.8 acre parcel was apparently going to be left untouched. Undeveloped.
Here’s Ms. Galabota, discussing the vacant property.
“We debated what we should do with that [property], and we spoke with the Town government, and a couple of years ago the Town said they were looking for a [public] parking space. So we said, how can we make that into a parking space? To help meet the Town need, as well as have auxiliary parking for us, and then also have a space that could be used for, like, a festival space. So it could have electricity, and accommodate music performances, food trucks, book sales, whatever it might be. For the Library, but also for the community.
“And the price tag came back at almost $2 million, just for that piece.
“First of all, that’s a really expensive parking lot. And then, we thought it did not really meet the needs of library services. So we went to the Town and said, ‘Look, if you want a parking lot here, you really need to partner with us.’ And the Town said, ‘That’s not in our plans’…”
As mentioned, the Library’s current capital campaign is pegged at $4 million.
Some of our Daily Post readers may have participated in the ongoing ‘Downtown Parking Survey’ currently underway on the Town’s special ‘survey’ website, MyPagosa.org.
Regardless of what survey results the Town gets from the public concerning supposed parking needs, we have a huge parking experiment already taking place, three blocks east of the library, in the very heart of the historic downtown.
A very accessible, centrally located, one-acre parking lot that has remained consistently empty throughout the peak Fourth of July tourist invasion.
Given the results of this parking experiment, I’m pleased to hear that the library has rejected the idea of developing another, less convenient parking lot with a $2 million price tag.
But… how about a different use, for the vacant property?
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.