Mariners library to raise sails in 2006

Readers can wander the stacks in remodeled facility in April if all goes to plan. Construction is set to finish in February.Only a few short months remain before readers can check books out of the spanking new Mariners Library.

It’s officially called the John and Donna Crean Mariners Branch Library, and its yearlong construction should wrap up in February, with opening expected in late April. Workers on Wednesday were smoothing concrete outside the beige stucco building, with some finishing work still left to do inside.

The spacious $5.7-million library with a generous amount of windows will replace a cramped, low-ceilinged facility that was built in the late 1950s.

“The other library feels closed in compared to this building,” Newport Beach Mayor Don Webb said during a tour Wednesday.

The new library’s 15,000 square feet will nearly double what’s now available, and the space will be shared with the adjacent Mariners Elementary School. That was an important consideration in the design, Webb said -- students can use a fenced pathway to walk between the school and library, and a security gate will close off part of the children’s area from the main section of the library.

“We’re really excited,” Newport Beach library services director Linda Katsouleas said. “It looks like the facilities are going to be exactly what we need for that community.”

The old library just doesn’t have the space to serve the many children in the area, she said, and it’s not set up for the varieties of technology people expect at libraries today.

“Wiring does make a difference,” she said.

The new library will have four times as many computers as the existing one, and it will offer wireless Internet access so people with laptops won’t have to wait for the public computers.

The library’s design was a cooperative effort with the school, and its funding also required teamwork. A $3.2-million state grant, about $1 million in private funds and money from the city paid for the building, along with $250,000 raised by the Friends of the Newport Beach Library.

Katsouleas said though the new library is bigger, filling it won’t be a problem.

“We’ve been preparing for a new Mariners [library] for years -- literally for at least three years,” she said.

More materials have already been purchased, and some books will be moved from the school’s library, which is now housed in a portable classroom.