Schools

PHOTOS: Vision of New Library Takes Shape Amid Busy Construction

Crews said the structure can now stand on its own, and they will focus on the interior for the next few weeks.

It takes some imagination to see stacks of books occupying the expansive site for the new Gilroy public library. The ground floor is dirt, and construction equipment continually whirrs in the background.

Yet as construction manager David Marks walked through the building, his gestures made the rapidly evolving space next to City Hall come to life. He pointed to a community room with huge windows and special “solar tubes” that would illuminate the second floor. A computer lab was busy, and sorting machines kept things organized.

Despite being only 25 percent complete, the vision of Gilroy’s new library is already taking shape in dramatic ways. A huge skylight illuminates the first floor, and meticulously crafted roof supports outline the building that the county’s lead librarian said would be the most environmentally friendly of the seven libraries in the system.

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“We’re very excited,” said Melinda Cervantes, executive director and head librarian for the Santa Clara County Library.

The city’s Ad Hoc Committee on Library Construction joined construction staff on a tour of the three-story site Monday, learning about the network of steel reinforcements in each concrete slab and the precision necessary to ensure each piece of the structure would fit together.

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The committee represents several members of city staff and government and meets with construction crews once a month.

If all goes according to plan, the concrete poured today will be to form the final primary walls of the building, said project manager James Kuhn.

“The supports can come down now,” he said.

Furniture and books should be able to move in next February, Marks said, with the planned opening of the new library in spring 2012.

When completed, the 53,500-square-foot library will replace

“That’s why I volunteered to be a part of the ad-hoc committee—to be a part of this,” said Councilwoman Cat Tucker.

Work that remains for the projected $37 million facility includes setting up the network of electrical systems that will become encased in concrete on the ground floor. Called a “floating slab,” the floor isn’t necessary to support the building, said City Engineer Rick Smelser.

“We’ll spend the next couple of weeks to make sure that everything underground is where it should be,” Kuhn said.

Options for library furniture, expected to cost $160,000, should be finalized for council consideration by late March, said City Administrator Tom Haglund.

“There will be a menu of options for them to choose from,” he said.

Many of the building’s most iconic features, including the large skylight and two-story atrium, were not part of the original design, Haglund said.

In the pursuit of the prestigious gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, architects used advanced computer modeling to design a system that ventilated the building naturally. The size of rooftop climate-control machinery was greatly reduced, making room for the skylight and an array of solar panels, according to a presentation by architects to the City Council late last month.

The certification requires that a building have a certain number of “points,” accumulated through the use of recycled materials and renewable energy. There are four levels: certified, silver, gold and the highest, platinum.

“It will be the only LEED-certified library in the system,” said Cervantes, who added that it will also be the only library with a solar array.

Even the concrete used is meant to make the building more energy efficient, Marks said.

Managers weren’t sure exactly how much concrete had been used so far, but they knew the benefits: While a purely steel building is easier to build, concrete is an excellent insulator—warmer in winter, cooler in summer—that can use the earth below to help regulate its temperature.

But building a concrete structure meant to last for decades isn’t easy. Workers had to precisely position steel reinforcements in the slabs, using special vibrators to ensure that it was evenly distributed. Corresponding brackets on the massive roof beams had to line up within one-eighth of an inch.

“If you were to look down one of these, the amount of steel … it’s basically a steel beam,” Marks said, pointing toward the recently completed preparations for the new wall.

Different elements of the building are continually inspected, Marks said, with the current concrete elements surpassing the strength required in the design.

The construction managers from the firm Nova Partners said the project is on-budget, with only 6 percent of its contingency fund used so far.

Voters approved the funding for the new library in 2008, with construction beginning in July of last year. 

Crews began demolishing the former city library, a 12,500-square-foot building, last April.

City spokesman Joe Kline has set up a live webcam so the public can watch the library construction from home and said he hopes to produce a time-lapse sequence of the project after it is complete. Viewers can log in to the service with the user name “public” and the password “libcam.”


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