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Photo by Jim Craven Library clerk Phyllis Zerr organizes shelves in the Jacksonville Library. A proposed new library, planned for the Munson property, would increase space from 1,115 to 5,000 square feet. Library's new home chosen Council chooses Munson property in Jacksonville By MELISSA MARTIN JACKSONVILLE -- Jacksonville's proposed new library has found a home. The City Council Tuesday chose the Munson property, a city-owned lot at the corner of California and Oregon streets, said Paul Wyntergreen, city administrator. "What we like best about this site is that it's really the community's choice about where they want their library to go," said Margaret Jakubcin, west county library manager. The building of the new Jacksonville library is contingent on the passage of a countywide bond measure that would expand or replace all 15 branch libraries. The bond measure is expected to be on the May 2000 ballot. Jacksonville's new library would be 5,000 square feet with 13,440 books and a 50-seat meeting room. Currently, Jacksonville's volumes are crammed in an 1855 brick building, the oldest facility in the county's library system. "I think the expansion will amaze people because they are accustomed to very small and non-functional spaces," Jakubcin said. The City Council was persuaded to vote for the Munson property after Jackson County Library Director Ronnie Budge showed designs that included 20 parking spaces, an important factor for a council that had earlier earmarked Munson as a 25-space parking lot. City Councilman John Dodero, who cast the lone dissenting vote in Tuesday's decision, said he spent 11 years working with a parking commission on a plan that listed the Munson property as a pivotal piece in the future of the city's parking. An estimated $450,000 in grants and city funds have been invested in purchasing the property and in building a Highway 238 off-ramp to get cars into the city's D and C street parking lots, Dodero said. "Everybody wants to put a park or a library on (the Munson property)," Dodero said. "But it's the intermodal center, the hub of our whole transportation plan." The new library would be located at the busiest corner in Jacksonville, Dodero said. "California and Oregon streets is a traffic nightmare. To put a library in a congested area doesn't seem like wise planning," he said. The Munson property's pluses outweigh potential traffic problems, says Jacksonville resident Larry Smith, who served on the Citizens Library Site Selection Advisory Committee. Throughout the site selection process, he has favored the Munson property because it's close to the downtown historic area, an RVTD bus stop, the new Veterans Park, Britt Gardens, Jacksonville Woodlands trails and the city's 300-space parking lots. "The site is so pleasing to the eye with its surrounding forests and wooded hillsides," Smith says. "Jacksonville's new library would be the most beautiful in the whole county library system." A new library would also take Jacksonville off the list of small branches. Jacksonville currently has 1,115 square feet of space, about the same as the Butte Falls branch, but larger than Prospect, which is 700 square feet, and Applegate, which is the smallest in the county with 500 feet. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA