If everything goes according to plans, at this time next year construction on the Gum Spring Library should be well on its way, bringing Dulles South its first public library.
"We know this community already needs this facility," Douglas Henderson, director of the county's public library, said at the Tuesday, Jan. 9, community meeting.
More than 20 residents gathered at Mercer Middle School to hear about the latest plans that would bring a 40,000-square-foot library facility to the corner of Route 50 and Stone Springs Boulevard in the Stone Ridge community.
THE FACILITY WILL occupy the first two floors of a four-story building being built by the Van Metre Companies, as part of the largest developer and county government partnership to date.
"Unfortunately, Library Services were not going to have the money to build a building and to fill it," Van Metre's Denise Harrover said. "We could give them a shell for them to fill."
Harrover told residents the top two floors of the building would be available for sale to local business that are interested.
"We are keeping our options open," she said. "Because of Inova [opening a facility in Dulles South] we will be looking at the medical fields, but we don't want to limit ourselves."
Harrover said that Van Metre hopes to obtain all the county permits it needs by April of this year so it can break ground in June. Construction of the library is expected to take approximately 18 months from the time Van Metre breaks ground, setting Gum Spring's opening date for the end of 2008.
MELANIE HENNIGAN, of Grimm and Parker Architects, who are designing the project, told attendees the Gum Spring Library was designed with Dulles South residents in mind.
"Our philosophy when we approached this design was for it to be very community oriented and very community based," she said. "This will be a regional library as well as being for the Stone Ridge community."
The facility will have two separate entrances, one for the library and one for the upper offices, and will be connected to the community through bicycle and walking paths, in addition to being along a main road.
"Libraries are great buildings because they really promote community," Hennigan said.
ONE OF THE challenges to creating a two-story library, Hennigan said, was to ensure that people would be drawn up to the second floor of the building once they arrived. In order to encourage people to explore, Hennigan said the library was designed with an open staircase in the center so that there is a visual connection between the two floors.
"We wanted to get people into the building, get them oriented and then draw them up to the second floor," she said.
The first floor will hold meeting rooms, circulation, audio and visual supplies and the large children's area. The children's area will also have immediate access to the meeting rooms, in case of larger children's programs or reading events.
The second floor will hold the teen area, complete with all varieties of media and study areas, nonfiction and fiction books, periodicals, quiet rooms and seating areas. There will also be a vending area on the second floor.
"There will be a mix of lounge seating and table and chairs," Hennigan said. "The thing we try to do with libraries is create different kinds of environments for different types of people."
EACH FLOOR of the library will have computers scattered throughout the children's, adult and teen areas, with wireless access throughout the building.
"The goal is, if you can sit down, we want you to be able to plug in [to the Internet]," Hennigan said.
Besides full-size glass walls to mitigate noise coming from the teen and children's area, the Gum Spring library will be designed with very few closed spaces, in order to give staff members easy sight lines throughout each floor.
"When you design with sight lines in mind you can minimize the number of staff members that can supervise," Hennigan said.
The northeast side of the building will be outfitted completely in glass, facing the natural pond next to the library, with tables and chairs for residents to use.
"When you look at seating areas, people tend to go to glass [windows] for the nice views," Hennigan said.
Residents will not have to worry about sun damage to the library's furniture or being exposed to sun heat, Hennigan said, however, because it will made from energy performance glass.
"This kind of glass isn't your standard, run-of-the-mill glass," Hennigan said. "It cuts out infrared rays, it cuts out UV rays, but let's in visible light. It is cutting out the worst part of the light spectrum."
ONCE THE SHELL of the library is built, however, there is still a lot to do, Henderson said. Gum Spring will open with 150,000 books, an average number for a library of its size, but those books will cost $3 million to purchase.
The original budget proposal listed the cost to build and furnish the library at $7.63 million, but Henderson said that the current cost is closer to $10.3 million.
"This is not the Taj Mahal," he said. "This is pretty basic when it comes to the interior. It is a very beautiful building that has not been overdone."
The funds for the library are planned for bond referendum this November, and Henderson said it is important for residents to tell their Supervisors how important they believe the library to be.
"They are the ones that have to convince the Supervisors that this is a worthwhile thing to do," he said.
Henderson said he hopes that the money comes through from the bond referendum, but that the library will open even if it is not fully funded.
"If we don't get that, we'll open just the first floor," he said. "That's what we hope will never happen, though, because the community needs this."