After more than 15 years of planning, the day that seemed as if it never would arrive is finally here: Gilroy’s state-of-the-art new library will open its doors to the public on Saturday.
“The day we’ve worked for all these years is finally here,” said Head Librarian Lani Yoshimura.
Excitement continues to mount in the new building. An elevator got last-minute checkups by a maintenance crew, while a computer technician fussed with the wires behind a copy machine. Library staff bantered with each other as they frantically shelved huge boxes of books. Yoshimura has been working 14-hour days to make sure everything comes together perfectly in time for the grand opening.
What is now a two–story, $37 million, 53,000-square-foot public library that Yoshimura said could draw upward of 2,000 patrons per day, began in 1997 as a grassroots movement from community members who were committed to building a new library.
Built in 1975, the former 12,500-square-foot library served the community’s needs for nearly 25 years. But as the population in Gilroy and surrounding areas rose, space for materials and patrons shrunk. Gilroyans had outgrown their library.
“There were times where it seemed like it wasn’t going to happen,” Yoshimura said.
The library project’s greatest pitfall came when the state rejected Gilroy’s bid to receive funding via a state bond measure for the third time in 2006.
Without state money, Gilroy residents had to decide if they still wanted to build a new library – which meant that property owners would face higher taxes.
But after holding three public forums that were packed with people who still supported building a new library, the City Council voted to put the bond measure on the ballot.
“I was pretty sure it wouldn’t pass, but I thought ‘what the heck,’ let’s put it on there anyways,” City Councilman Bob Dillon said.
So Yoshimura went to work, and along with a grassroots group of Gilroyans, began campaigning with a meager $600 – which grew to $35,000 from small community contributions.
Dillon said he’ll never forget the night that Gilroy voted on the library bond measure. He went to bed nervous that that the project hadn’t passed. (The count late into the evening leveled at 66.5 percent and the measure needed at least 67 percent to pass.)
“I thought to myself, ‘Oh please no, not this,’” Dillon said.
The next morning, Gilroy voters pulled the measure through, passing it with nearly 70 percent of the vote.
“I was so pumped that it passed,” he said.
Mayor Al Pinheiro, after having just left from a visit to the library on Friday, said that the building took his breath away.
“I’m proud of our community and the fact that they stepped up, especially in the tough economic times we were having, to vote for this bond,” Pinheiro said. “Their hard–earned dollars provided this library not only for the community now, but for future generations.”
The seismically stable building should last 50 to 100 years, said City Administrator Tom Haglund.
“It’s hard to believe that only three-and-a-half years have passed,” Haglund wrote in an email. “We wasted no time in pursuing the project and we have made the most of what Gilroy residents have provided in terms of the financing necessary for this wonderful facility.”
A community design
The library’s long and narrow structure is inspired by Gilroy resident Shawna McKenzie, during a community brainstorming session in 2001, Yoshimura said.
“We had lumps of clay, and Shawna just started shaping this long, narrow structure with her clay. When the architect later saw it, he said ‘Oh my gosh, we hadn’t thought of that design,’ and it’s the design that they chose to use.”
Before the bond measure passed, Yoshimura, McKenzie, and others on the ragtag committee of library enthusiasts, fought to keep the library plan alive.
“All those years we were positive it was going to happen, we just weren’t sure when,” McKenzie said. Friday. McKenzie remembers spending those years making hundreds of phone calls, drumming up support and fundraising anywhere she could.
“It was a lot of work, but I’d do it all over again,” she said.
McKenzie said that through the campaigning process, she saw just how involved and supportive Gilroy can be.
“People here are a lot more involved and giving than we think they are. So many people in Gilroy really care about their community,” she said.
Eleven years after McKenzie created that nascent design out of clay, the long–but–narrow southerly exposed building is ready to make its debut to the public.
The building’s design contributes to its green functionality: The length naturally keeps the temperature mild, as the ends of the building heat up but protects the rest of the building from extreme temperatures, Yoshimura said, while the south–facing windows keep the building bright with natural light late into the afternoon.
“It’s an amazing design, and it came from the community,” Yoshimura said.
Despite quadrupling the old building’s size, Yoshimura said that the new building won’t cost much more to heat or cool – that is, if it costs more at all.
“That building was so inefficient,” Yoshimura said of old library, which was built in 1975.
Gilroy’s new hub
The cure to an unknown disease is probably being researched right now, in a public library somewhere in small town USA, Yoshimura believes.
“This is the place where greatness happens,” Yoshimura said, motioning to aisles of books flooded with bright, natural lighting and surrounded by solid wood tables in the sleek adult section on the second floor of the library.
Yoshimura said that the library is more than a place to check out the latest bestseller or have free access to a computer. To Yoshimura, the library is about community.
“You find people outside the norm at a public library,” she said, laughing and remembering a time she connected two patrons who both happened to be fascinated with dead languages. Yoshimura said those men became close friends, until one of them died a few years ago.
“Libraries are all about linking the community together like that,” she said.
Yoshimura is excited about how the new library will bring people together in ways that the old building couldn’t because of size limitations.
“The library is your friend for life,” Yoshimura said. “It can serve you from before you are born to the moment you die.”
Between all services and resources the new library will offer, Yoshimura believes there is something for everyone.
Amid all the excitement for the library’s grand opening, which begins at 10 a.m. Saturday, there is one thing that Yoshimura, along with city staff and council, regret: Kathleen Smith, Library Commission chair and major advocate for the new library, died April 3.
“This was Kathleen’s dream, and boy, it is a shame she will not be with us for opening day,” Councilman Dillon said.
But even in her death, Smith has continued to support the library cause – in lieu of flowers, her family has asked people to donate to the new library.
Yoshimura said that Smith was one of the hundreds of people who made the opening of this brand–new, beautiful library a possibility, a facility that will serve Gilroy for generations.
“We’ve finally made it,” Yoshimura said. “We’re finally here.”
