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Conceptualization Project a Step Forward for New Library

By Beacon Staff

After a year and a half of irresolution, the Flathead County Library Board of Trustees is now looking to the public and three architectural firms to help pinpoint a location for the new main library in Kalispell.

Architects Northwest, CTA Architects and Engineers and NFA, Fullerton Architects were selected last week out of the five firms who submitted letters of interest in the Main Library Conceptualization Project.

Each firm has been randomly assigned a site, recommended to the Library Board by the Citizens Advisory Committee on Library Facilities, and must efficiently encompass building space, parking needs and integration into the surrounding area.

Firms will have 30 days to produce an idea, which will be presented to the Library Board August 25 at 9 a.m. in the Main Library. In appreciation, each of them will receive $1,000.

“This is another information-gathering process,” Connie Leistiko, a Library Board trustee and member of the facilities committee, said. She added that the project’s objective is not to pick an architect, but rather to help the board and public visualize what the new library could look like on a particular site or existing building.

After the presentations, Leistiko said they will decide whether they have enough information to make an informed choice and if they need to look at other sites.

Flathead County Library System Director Kim Crowley said she would like to see a modern new library building that’s easy to manage and comfortable.

“The community told us the most important thing in a library is community living space,” she said. “We’d like to build it as a living room of community.”

Architectural firms were given a standard set of parameters, which include a building square footage of 52,000 and 100 parking spaces.

“Other than that, we are letting them use their experience and creativity to see what they could do with various sites,” Leistiko said.

She said the three specific firms chosen by the board demonstrated extensive past experience and innovation.

Michael Kohl with Architects Northwest, said the project appealed to him because it’s high-profile for the city of Kalispell and the Flathead Valley.

His firm has been assigned to the Flathead Industries site off of Fifth Avenue West, which is northwest of the mall. Kohl said he has some ideas up his sleeve on how he will approach the site. After touring the library with Crowley last week, he said there’s a real need for natural light and seating areas for children, teens and adults.

Corey Johnson at CTA Architects and Engineers said his firm has extensive library experience and places an emphasis on designing sustainable and LEED-certified buildings, and that is what they stressed in their letter of interest to the Library Board.

“Now we’re just in the beginning stages of getting our arms wrapped around this particular site,” he said. CTA has the site at Center and Third streets, south of the Dollar Store, and Johnson said the firm’s strategy is first to do an extensive site analysis in order to define all of the parameters.

While he said the group is excited about the site they were given because it presents a clean slate, it is a Brownfields site, which means there is some contaminated soil due to its proximity to railroad tracks and some gasoline filling stations in the area. But this could be a blessing in disguise.

“If the county is passionate about sustainable architecture, you can gain credits and points by cleaning up a Brownsfields site,” Johnson said.

Leistiko said she’s aware of the contaminated site, and it would not necessarily be a deterrent from picking that location.

“We’ve been led to believe there may be problems with any site we pick and that there are grant monies available to the city and county for cleaning up that kind of thing,” she said. “I’m sure that if the existing building had problems, if other sites had problems we would certainly have to explore what our opportunities would be for getting that cleaned up. And that would go into the mix of the final decision.”