Edhat Staff
By the edhat staff
The downtown Santa Barbara public library plaza project initially planned a grand opening in October but due to construction delays it’s been pushed to Spring 2024.
The Michael Towbes Library Plaza broke ground in May 2022 as a three-phase project totalling $9.3 million, a cost funded by the city and the Santa Barbara Public Library Foundation nonprofit.
The October 21, 2023 grand opening ceremony had been recently advertised until Wednesday morning when Lauren Trujillo, Director of the Santa Barbara Public Library Foundation, alerted donors of the schedule change.
“Unforseen construction delays” included supply chain issues and a strong rainy season were cited as part of the problem.
“If anyone would understand a construction delay, it would be Mike Towbes,” Carrie Towbes was quoted as saying in the donor email.
Trujillo echoed the great significance this completed plaza holds for many as it has been years in the making.
“We want to ensure that we can host a truly memorable celebration for the community that has made this effort possible. With this in mind, we have decided to aim for a Spring 2024 opening. This will allow us to avoid potential weather challenges and conflicts with holiday festivities, providing a more favorable environment for the event,” wrote Trujillo.
Construction crews began laying the pavers, including the path to the Anapamu Entrance in May of 2023 (courtesy photo)
Memorial olive trees were moved carefully into their new homes on the Upper Plaza this summer. (Click the photo to watch a video of the olive trees being planted.)
2011, initial plans started with the plaza on the city’s radar.
March 2022, the City Council unanimously approved the construction contract
May 4, 2022: construction officially commenced with groundbreaking ceremony.
July 11, 2022, construction began on Library Plaza
‘Don’t kill the job’ means: don’t do anything to speed-up the finishing of the project you are working on — do things to drag it out as long as you can so that you milk the job for all it’s worth. This applies, especially, to work being done for a government entity because you can get away with it a lot easier.
That looks like exactly what’s going on with the 101 widening project. Keep it going!!
And it’s exactly how the State St. Promenade will go.
And exactly how the De La Guerra Plaza remodel will go. Inertia is contagious….
Someone out there likes what’s going on with it…ok!
The current library administration is a disaster. They have alienated their compatriots, opted out of the Black Gold system which was a great source of lending for so many of us. They are trying to change the whole idea of a free library, one of the foundation stones of American exceptionalism, into a carnival. We need librarians that are actually interested in ideas and intellectual resources, not tool boxes and ebikes.
Agree 100% with this posting. First, they emphasize digital resources; then, they get rid of many of the paper and real ink books; then, they push hard against the homeless, some of the very few who enjoy going now to the once and so-called library; then, they emphasize the “library of things”; then, it was the outside Towbes library plaza, to be the “hub for lifelong literacy and civic participation”, the endpoint of the promenade, rather than a shady sitting place for homeless. It has sometimes seemed, with a policeman at the door, that this has been a battle against the bedraggled and homeless. Even the Faulkner Gallery art exhibits have felt lifeless.
These last years the library director goes grinning to the city council, winning over several very strong supporters who got to where they are not via a library of things but by studying books, real books, not just e-books that have a very short library lifespan, not playing with “things” that are better lent out by MOXI.
And here we are, the cemented “plaza” put off until the spring, the sad library probably to close again for more construction…. Did no one ever ask Lompoc people about how Jessica Cadiente ran their library before she was hired her for us?