Southdale Library Plans

ARCHITECTS SEEK INPUT

EDINA — The new Southdale Library should include a theater for the performing arts, a Bloomington resident suggested Monday night at a community meeting hosted by MSR architects at the exsiting library.

Library patrons crowded into the community room to brainstorm in small groups on their hopes for a new library.  A meeting room that could accomodate up to 100 people and larger elevators for the handicap and baby strollers were among the proposals for the new building.

Four to five acres of the existing seven acre site would be devoted to the new library, the architects said.  In meetings last year input was sought by MSR for non library development of the remaining two acres which would include “affordable housing.”  (Has the Suburban Hennepin Housing Coalition provided input on what is “affordable”?)

Hennepin County Commissioners will decide on final plans for this new multi-use development on York Avenue.  The next community meeting will be held at the Southdale Library at 7 pm July 23.

Thomas Meyer, FAIA, Jeffrey Scherer, FAIA, and Garth Rockcastle, FAIA, established MSR in 1981. Their office is located within the ruined walls of the National Historic Landmark Washburn A Mill above the Mill City Museum. The MSR-designed complex has won numerous awards, including a national AIA Honor Award and National Trust for Historic Preservation Honor Award.

(I had asked in the small group if taxpayers were paying for the architects’ work of if it was pro bono, which brought an angry response from a library patron for my apparent “stupidity”.)  The architects are funded by tax dollars.