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On July 28, a standing-room only crowd of library supporters joined Mayor Jerry Sanders and City and State officials to break ground on San Diego's New Central Library. The new facility will be a new center for literacy and learning in San Diego. To support the New Central Library, click the button below.
A new heart for the San Diego Public Library system Branch libraries are the heart of each community, and the Central Library is the heart of the City’s 35-branch Library system, providing resources, collections, expertise and reference support. With each passing year, the current facility becomes less able to fulfill this essential role. A healthy new Central Library is essential to a healthy branch system. Significant private donations coupled with designated funding that can only be used for this project make building and operating the new Central Library within reach, without using one cent from the City of San Diego’s General Fund. More than $150 million is already earmarked for this project from the State Library, Centre City Development, the City Schools and private donors. An additional $10 million has been donated to cover additional operating costs. San Diego should capitalize on this opportunity to build this long-needed new civic asset that will benefit all of San Diego for decades to come. A landmark building meeting San Diego' s needs The new Central Library will meet many civic objectives. First and foremost, the Library serves the community’s needs for literacy, information and knowledge in the 21st century. The building will also be a new civic icon that embodies San Diego's commitment to the future. The building's design reflects the input of hundreds of people who participated in a series of public workshops. Based on this input, the joint venture team of Rob Wellington Quigley, FAIA and Tucker Sadler Architects implemented a breath-taking design. The Library is a 9-story building of flexible spaces with diverse and accessible public amenities. Bay view terraces, roof gardens and a public “reading room” reflect and celebrate San Diego's natural beauty and temperate climate. All of the Library's spaces are designed to open, inviting patrons to explore or relax with a new-found book. Special features include a 400-seat flexible multipurpose room on the eighth floor, a cafe and a unique reading room under the lattice dome—creating a unique and extraordinary facility. The design allows the Central Library to fulfill its crucial role as the heart of the 35-branch system--with space to provide literacy, children's and adult programs, disabled access, technology and web-based services, and answers to reference questions from throughout the region. For more information on the need for the new Central Library, visit here. A needed downtown school An exciting new 76,000 square foot charter high school is planned for the unused sixth and seventh floors of the Library. The unique and special access students would enjoy to vast research, reference and technology resources would be unparalleled. This high school meets an identified and pressing need downtown. With San Diego and Lincoln High Schools beyond capacity, the San Diego Unified School District has recognized the need for additional high school capacity downtown. The school will be independent from the Library with its own dedicated ground-level entrance and lobby, its own circulation system, its own elevators and stairwell. The charter high school builds upon the Library’s role as a regional learning center and is one of more than 35 schools within two miles of the new Central Library that will benefit from an after-hours homework center with collections, electronic resources, tutoring and a volunteer program to support students’ homework and project needs. For more on the planned high school, VISIT HERE. Greater resources The library will offer far greater collections, parking, computers, amenities and public areas than the existing facility. The new Central Library will be a technology center, offering San Diegans equal, free access. The new Central Library helps close the ‘digital divide’ with more than 400 workstations, available laptops, spaces for teaching the use of new technology and free WiFi access. The new Central Library is a community space where San Diegans will gather to celebrate culture, hear great music, appreciate art work, and discuss critical issues. Downtown San Diego, the region’s fastest growing area, is the logical spot for a civic space of this scope and versatility. For a floor-by-floor cross-section of the new library visit here. Garden Courtyard celebrates San Diego's climate Patrons enter the library from an arcade inspired by Balboa Park into a glass enclosed three-story lobby with access to the circulation desk, popular library and children's library. At the ground level, large folding glass doors open to the southern Garden Courtyard. Across the Garden Courtyard is a 350-seat, sloped floor auditorium. During good weather, the entire facade between the auditorium and Courtyard opens up to increase capacity and share activities. This outdoor room, shaded by large trees, will serve as San Diego's town square--a large adaptable space that can host large brown-bag concerts, author talks and civic events or more intimate gatherings. "People's Penthouse" The top floors of the new Central Library will serve as a cultural penthouse. A great, airy, three-story crystalline reading room anchors this penthouse and is shaded by the dome latticework overhead. A series of open terraces look down into the reading room and out to the city and bay beyond. A flexible, 400-seat multi-purpose room looks to the west. An art gallery with a vaulted ceiling faces the Park to the north. Completing the complex is a smaller public meeting room. This inviting Public Penthouse to the Library not only celebrates the central civic role of the modern library but intrinsically links this primary cultural and educational resource to one of our greatest physical amenities: San Diego Bay. Unique among civic architecture in the United States, the library's inside/outside latticework dome protects the public rooms and terraces from both the summer sun and cool bay breezes. Visually, it differentiates the Library from the commercial high-rises and hotels around it. Symbolically, it ties this building of our time to the regional architectural traditions of our past.
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