Major budget pressures and a world increasingly altered by technology are making it necessary to rethink current plans for Ottawa’s new central library, Mayor Jim Watson said during a recent interview on Rogers cable TV.
Current projects such as the reconstruction of Lansdowne Park and the proposed light rail transit system leave no room for a new downtown library in the capital budget, Watson said during the interview.
“There’s no question the downtown library is not the most attractive building and not the most functional building, no question at all,” Watson said. “But I’ve always said if we’re going to look at a new downtown library we have to look long and hard about the purpose of a library.”
Watson said the need for a traditional library is less clear considering how much the world has changed since the advent of the Internet.
“We’ll always need libraries and I’m a big fan of libraries . . . we just don’t have the money to spend upwards of $250 million on a new downtown library at this stage,” he said.
Watson suggested the proponents of several projects in Ottawa’s downtown core – the central library, a proposed concert hall and a new art gallery – combine their efforts and build for the future by pooling their resources into a reserve fund.
Julian Armour, head of Friends of the Concert Hall, a group dedicated to raising funds and support for the proposed venue, says combining the new central library and concert hall would be a great use of space and an efficient use of city funds.
“If Ottawa’s got anything, it’s got one of the highest per capita levels of education in the world,” Armour says. “That it doesn’t have a great central library is truly sad. It’s tragic in my opinion.”
The suggestion to include other projects in the plan for a new central library “is an exciting idea, but not a new idea,” says the city’s chief librarian, Barbara Clubb.
Clubb says there are many examples of joint facilities across Canada. The central branch of the Vancouver Public Library, for example, shares a site with an office tower.