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College, city set to build new library
By BRYAN GILMER, Times Staff Writer ST. PETERSBURG -- A library boom is under way in Pinellas County. Mayor Rick Baker and Carl Kuttler, president of St. Petersburg College, announced on Monday a plan to build a new public library that would be the city's biggest. St. Petersburg now joins several Pinellas cities with plans to build new, large public libraries, all of them scheduled to open within the next three years. The 50,000-square-foot library, which city residents would share with the college's students and faculty, will go up on the edge of the SPC campus at 66th Street and Fifth Avenue N. The library would have 150,000 books, dozens of computers, a coffee bar, a 100-seat auditorium, and more Internet access than the city's main library. Western St. Petersburg residents are already sharing an 8,000 square-foot library with students at Azalea Middle School. The middle school will take over after the SPC project is complete, Baker said. The library is scheduled to open in 2005, but before construction begins, the City Council and the college's Board of Trustees each have to approve the idea. The state also must kick in $7-million to pay the college's share. But Baker said City Council members like the plan, especially given that the city would pay $2-million, hundreds of thousands less than it is spending to build each of two smaller branch libraries. Those buildings will each cover 15,000 square feet and are located at 62nd Avenue S and 22nd Street, and next to the Enoch Davis Center on 18th Avenue S west of Dr. M.L. King (Ninth) St. "This is a time of tight finances, and any time you can partner so each of you can spend less and yet expand greatly the services, I'm going to jump on the opportunity if we can," Baker said Monday morning at a news conference. Maybe St. Petersburg had library envy. The college and the city of Seminole are already teaming up on a similar, $6.8-million library on SPC's campus on 113th Street. Largo is planning a 93,000-square-foot library. In October, Clearwater city commissioners approved a new $20.2-million, 90,000-square-foot main library (coffee here too) to be built in the city's downtown. In February, Eckerd College said that two gifts totaling $13-million would allow it to construct a 58,000-square-foot library. By comparison, the Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library System includes no library bigger than 25,000 square feet, and a typical branch library there is 10,000 square feet. St. Petersburg Deputy Mayor Mike Dove said a cooperative library is harder to run. "Obviously, you've got two entities that do libraries differently trying to make it seamless," Dove said. He said he doesn't know whether the city will contribute staffers or just operating money. But he said the bigger building, extra computers and a wider selection of materials, such as scholarly journals, outweigh any potential snags. Western St. Petersburg residents, who sometimes complain that their government forgets about them, were thrilled Monday. "It sounds wonderful," said Lance Lubin, president of the Eagle Crest Homeowners Association, just across 66th Street from the library site. "The farthest point in our neighborhood is five blocks away."
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