New Granite Library, Salt Lake County Public Library System

It's time for an update to my post, "Neighborhood libraries as nodes in a neighborhood and city-wide network of cultural assets."  But this isn't it.

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Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County have separate library systems, although each library is open to the patrons of the other.  So double the libraries.

Salt Lake City's libraries are distinctive because they have a lot of elements that add value.  They've thought through things in a manner that most library systems have not, even touted systems like DC and Seattle.

For example, all the libraries have large meeting rooms.  Each of the rooms is outfitted with a piano.  Every library has a children's section, which includes a slop sink.  The libraries have maker spaces and other dedicated spaces.  The Marmalade branch has a coffee shop (poorly designed so it hasn't really worked) and the meeting room, outfitted with stadium style seating, is set up so that it can be securely open separate from when the library is closed. And the main branch is superb ("The Salt Lake City Central Library is Incredible,"2013).

Salt Lake County is a leader in terms of developing co-located functions as part of community facilities.  For example, the Millcreek Community Center includes a library, recreation center and senior center, and the food service for seniors is positioned as a cafe open to the public, plus it abuts a small park.

The Viridian Center library complex includes very large meeting rooms capable of holding a few hundred people each and can be joined together and an outdoor amphitheater.  And the Sorenson Community Center, with recreation facilities, in Salt Lake City, has a number of community serving functions, including a social services oriented dental clinic, as it is located on the city's west side, which is less well off economically.  

Oh, and interestingly, the County provides recreation centers throughout the county.  Even in incorporated cities like Salt Lake City the recreation centers are run by the county.

Granite Library is the newest county library and it replaces and expands two smaller library facilities that were nearby.  It has a lot of meaning to the community, because it's on the site of the old Granite High School, which despite efforts to retain the building, did not come to fruition ("District approves $2.5 million demolition of Granite High School," Salt Lake Tribune). 

SLT photo by Al Hartmann.

The school district sold the land, but the County and City of South Salt Lake, after a lot of effort, were able to get the developer to sell them back part of the site, for a community facility because there was a strong sense that the site should continue to have a public purpose.

And they built this library ("At new Granite Library, Utah's past and present meets," SLT).  

And while it isn't quite set up with co-located functions in the same way as some of others, it does have exemplary examples of multi-purpose elements on site.  

The "front yard" of the building includes a picnic area (needs some shade trees), a children's playground with exercise equipment, and a pergola-style amphitheater.  Public art is also placed on site, and the building materials are of exceptional quality.  The grass is a specially selected blend that uses small amounts of water.

And adjacent to the picnic area there are accessible commercial electricity connections so food trucks can hook up and operate a lot more quietly.

The City of South Salt Lake is big on installing exercise equipment in their parks, and they have two multipurpose community centers that I intend to write about later.  I presume that helped bring about the exercise playground to this site.

Inside, the library has a great maker space, including a "green screen room" for video work, and the large meeting room has a first that I've seen, a demonstration kitchen.  

There are children's and teen spaces, smaller meeting rooms, and other functions. Computers of course.

But the green screen room and kitchen facilities definitely stand out.

Salt Lake City and County libraries tend to have way better periodical collections than DC's branch libraries, and the Granite Library is no exception.

The small meeting rooms incorporate large scale photos of memorable moments from Granite High School.  And there is a display case with ephemera and other memorabilia from the old High School as well.