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The Borough Planning Commission Thursday evening gave the Phoenixville Public Library Foundation some more homework to do on its proposed expansion project.
Library engineers will be talking to Borough engineers about the scope of a traffic impact study; Library lawyers will be talking to Borough lawyers to clarify the status of the applicant, and to clarify the legal consequences of vacating Second Avenue.
All of those tasks will end with findings of fact necessary to judge the case. However, none of those answers will ultimately determine the conclusion which some seek: to stop the proposal in its tracks.
Nor should they. The Library must expand; that it should expand where it is has been a first assumption of the proposal. The assumption is correct, and the proposal is a fitting solution – in the most important of respects, an elegant solution.
Expanding onto Second Avenue preserves and puts to best continued use the last Carnegie Library in Chester County.
Expanding onto Second Avenue preserves, literally and figuratively, the centrality of the Library in the Borough.
Expanding onto Second Avenue retains the Library’s relationship to Reeves Park – even makes that relationship a more intimate one, appropriate for two highly compatible uses.
To argue that closing Second Avenue interrupts the traditional urban street grid pattern is accurate. But that pattern is no sacred template. As a matter of traffic planning, the proposal is less about closing a portion of a street than it is about redirecting traffic flow.
To recommend keeping the Carnegie Library and looking for supplemental space in “satellite” libraries elsewhere is to accept by definition increased operational costs inherent in, and a consequence of, duplication of facilities, services and staff.
(That last one is an argument for a sort of bibliographical sprawl. But we know what we all think of sprawl.)
Posted by
G.E. “Skip” Lawrence
posted by The Phoenix Files at
6:39 AM
2 Comments:
Why not relocate the library to the old fire company one the north side? It already has it's own off street parking?
As was pointed out by Genevieve Wilk in Karen John's blog:
What about public utilities under 2nd Avenue including sewers. See the following:
53 P.S. § 47012
Purdon's Pennsylvania Statutes and Consolidated Statutes Currentness
Title 53 P.S. Municipal and Quasi-Municipal Corporations
Part VI. Boroughs (Refs & Annos)
Chapter 91. The Borough Code (Refs & Annos)
Article XX. Sanitary Sewers
(A) Laying Out, Ordaining and Construction of Sewers and Construction of Sewage Treatment Works (Refs & Annos)
>>§ 47012. Unlawful to build within right-of-way of sewers
It shall be unlawful for any person to erect any building or make any improvement, within the right-of-way of any sewer laid out or ordained to be laid out, after due notice thereof; and, if any such erection or improvement shall be made, no allowance shall be had therefor in the assessment of damages.
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