Amid outcry over a proposed $1.5 million annex, the head of the Woodstock Library Board adamantly denied that any plans include demolition of the current building.
“It isn’t going to get torn down,” Board of Trustees Chairman Stuart Auchincloss emphatically declared in response to public reaction and recent letters to the editor. “That question is so far from being considered,” Auchincloss said. “The board isn’t even talking about it.”
The $1.5 million library annex design by Joel Sanders Architect calls for a 2,050-square-foot building at the site of the former Woodstock Laundromat across Library Lane that includes a 65-seat meeting space that can be divided into smaller areas, a “maker-space” workshop, two unisex bathrooms, a small kitchen, storage room, front and rear decks and a roof deck. The library purchased the property at a county foreclosure sale for $71,000 through privately raised funds.
Auchincloss was responding to a letter he had written to former Planning Board Chairman John Ludwig. In the letter, Auchincloss said the plan was to create the annex to gather experience for “ultimately replacing our current building.” A study done in 2007 “identified quite a few problems with the physical plant,” Auchincloss said.
That study, he said, found the need for an additional several thousand square feet, and the current building can’t meet that need. It has a lack of electrical plugs for people to use their laptops, an “elderly” heating system and lack of insulation among other issues. Sump pumps wear out because the basement gets a lot of water, for example, he said.
“Most of the building was built for residential purposes. It isn’t built like a modern library,” he said. “The library board and director know there are plenty of deficiencies.”
Since money for the annex will come from private fundraising, Auchincloss dismisses criticisms of future costs by saying it’s a bargain in exchange for a “$1.5 million gift” to the community.
Ludwig, who has objected to the plan, said that the public is still in the dark.
“It was quite a statement he made,” Ludwig said in response to the letter. He feels there is a fair bit of backpedaling going on in the wake of public outcry. It appears to Ludwig that a proposal for major renovations shot down by voters by a huge margin in 2007 included plans to “completely replace” the current library, and he says that despite claims to the contrary, the plan in 2007 was not very open to the public. “They kind of sprang it on us,” he said. “They say they have meetings open to the public, but nobody showed up to the meetings.”
Ludwig said when he recently asked people about the annex proposal, few knew about the size and scope of the project. “I really think they need a better way of reaching out to the public,” he said. “People just don’t know what the library is planning to do.”
At the April 8 town board meeting, public access television producer and regular speaker Randi Steele expressed her disapproval of the current annex plan. Holding up a copy of Woodstock Times in which a drawing of the annex was pictured, Steele said, “If the town were to approve this as pictured, you might as well throw away any rules on aesthetics.”
Councilman Ken Panza told Steele that the library is a separate entity whose board is elected by the voters and concerns should be addressed to them.
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