"One of the reasons we were told that we desperately needed a new library in a new location was that the old library on Church Street, across from City Hall, was so decrepit and falling apart and costly to renovate that it was better abandoned and made an 'opportunity site' for some other, unspecified development," writes Stephen Kessler. "That library, still presumably crumbling, for now remains our downtown branch, and we can only hope it survives until the mixed-use project is more than a figment of Mathews’ (and housing expert Don Lane’s) imagination."
"Perhaps you were wondering what had happened to the flagship branch of the county library system since the overwhelming passage in 2016 of Measure S, funding renovation or reconstruction of all eight branches except Watsonville, whose library is incorporated into its Civic Plaza building," writes Stephen Kessler. "Since then, every other branch but downtown has been renovated or rebuilt with the $67 million bestowed by Measure S $27 million of which was designated for downtown, of which roughly $24.5 million remains after diversion of some of those monies to other branches and to assorted studies, reports and plans."