Absinthe & Cookies (a bit bitter, a bit sweet)

A Whole New Meaning To "Home Library"

How would you like to live above a city library?

You can read romances, sip coffee, grab lunch, watch movies and curl up in comfortable chairs at Salt Lake City's Main Library. Why not just move in? Living in a library - it's a book lover's dream. Living atop a library could be the next best thing. And, in what may be a first for Utah, that might be possible in a future branch near downtown. While most libraries are built to stand alone, tentative designs for a Capitol Hill branch at 500 North and 300 West call for 24 condos to sit on top. "It's what everybody's talking about these days, walkable neighborhoods," says architect Prescott Muir. "The best way to create a walkable neighborhood is to jumble it all up." Muir is designing a mixed-use project on 300 West between 500 North and 600 North for Howa Capital. The company is developing the property - which would include a small grocery store, shops, up to 85 housing units and the library - for the city's Redevelopment Agency. The library is no sure thing. No money is earmarked to build it or run it after voters refused in 2003 to raise their taxes to pay for it and another branch in Glendale. That bond failed by 149 votes. But the city's library system does plan to build a branch in both neighborhoods eventually, and the RDA required a library be a part of the Capitol Hill redevelopment design. At first, Muir considered a library a "black hole" in the development. An early design placed it out of the way on top of the grocery store. But a subsequent market study showed the library should be the project's focal point, that it would lure customers to the surrounding stores. Now, designs have it on 500 North, on what's considered the development's most prominent corner. The study didn't surprise library director Nancy Tessman. "Libraries really genuinely are catalysts for neighborhood building. It's about shops and it's about services and it's about community and education. The more we can tie all those together, the more we create more good, healthy, positive neighborhoods."

Posted by Ithildin at August 16, 2005 10:44 AM | PROCURE FINE OLD WORLD ABSINTHE