Revisions to the New Silver Spring Library Plan Reduce Cost by 3 million
Even though cost were lowered escalators remain in the plan.
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Silver Spring residents voiced their concerns Tuesday after reviewing the updated plans for the new Silver Spring Library at Wayne Avenue and Fenton Street.
Officials from the Montgomery County Department of General Services and The Lukmire Partnership provided the 30 local residents with details of the new exterior of the building as well as various options explored to reduce the cost.
Greg Lukmire, the Architect on the project opened with a visual presentation combining elements of the August 26 Design Update with more current renderings and previously undiscussed floor plans.
"Basically, we have been refining, talking about the exterior of the building and other options for reducing the overall cost, which we have done by $3 million dollars," said Lukmire.
To trimcosts their was a redesign of some interior elements and one key exterior change.
Some of the major changes included moving the conference rooms to the second floor, elminating several flights of emergency stairs; changing the designed single, long escalator to a "zig-zag" design helped reduce the sheer square footage of some floors and the costly structural glass featured in the initial design has been replaced with curtain glass.
While the reduction in the project's construction cost of $32 million was welcomed news to attendees, one resident was concerned about removal of the escalators.
Lukmire responded that the escalators will remain a part of the project and " also, we've added two elevators."
Other attendees raised concerns about whether the cost reduction would equate to less library space.
Donald Scheuerman, The Section Chief Project Manager Division of Building Design for the General Services Department assured residents that the actual library space will "remain at 65,000 square feet - five times the current library space."
He also shared more details about how the non-library spaces would be utilized. The community meeting rooms are now slated to the 2nd floor so that they can be more accessible to the library patrons, county offices will move further up to the 7th floor and Pyramid Atlantic will remain on 1st floor, he said.
Overall, the re-design was excitied residents who attended the meeting especially Library Manager Dan Beavin. Beavin has been apart of this project since the start and has seen a massive improvement.
"Early designs were not particularly exciting, but input from citizens and library staff have really helped the architects produce a design that is just superb. I really believe this will be a landmark building."
The construction for the library has begun and will be about a 9-10 month endeavor, said Scheuerman. Factoring in actual construction time he added that January 1, 2014 is still a realistic date.
