City of Cupertino, CA Highlights, 24 Nov 2021

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From YouTube: Library Expansion Virtual Tour

Description

Our new library space is nearing completion! Get a first hand look inside the progress being made on the 5,600 square foot, two-story expansion project.

A

Hello, everyone and welcome this, of course, is the cupertino library and we're here today to provide you some updates with regard to the cupertino library expansion project, I'm mayor, darcy, paul and I'm very pleased today to be joined here by our cupertino library. Commissioner, ching pan is also on the board of the cupertino library foundation.

A

We have susan michael of the cupertino city and she is the project manager for the cupertino library, expansion and we're also very honored to have claire varezio, the city librarian for the cupertino library of the santa clara county library district, and so I think everyone knows that in our civic center we have a library, we have community hall and we have city hall. But not.

A

Everyone is quite as familiar with the interrelation between these several buildings, and so um when we opened the library here in 2004, uh what we ended up doing was taking a little bit of that allocation and building a new community hall space where the city council can meet and the public could gather for our formal meetings.

A

At the same time, however, what we ended up doing in this very beautiful 56, 000 square foot, new library, space back in 2004, was taking a bit of space that was supposed to be going into there and moving it over into our community hall chambers. And, of course, we have city hall inside of the civic center as well, where our council chambers used to be located and where our emergency operating center um is located out of our old city hall chamber. But what ended up happening over the course of the last 17 years or so?

A

Is that we? We realized that you know this is actually the most popular amenity space in all of cupertino. It has the highest patronage of the entire santa clara county library district. It has the highest circulation. We have the people here, there's certainly the interest, but we don't have the meeting space.

A

So, in addition to the fact that this is the most frequented of all the libraries in santa clara county, we also have the fact that it's, the only library without a formal meeting space, and so we do have a relatively smaller story, room near the children's section. But if you've ever been in there, what you realize is that it's not particularly expansive or conducive to some of these larger types of meetings.

A

You can put 40 people in a bit of a cramped configuration and for for comparison's sake if you're going to community hall- and you have been to a city council meeting or to any number of the events that are held there, community hall can hold about 170 people now with the addition of our 5600 square foot library, expansion, space, where the bridge interconnecting the back arms of the library uh was located, where some children's stacks were formerly we're going to be able to have two floors of meeting space, they're configurable with movable walls that you'll be able to see.

A

You know the the basic framework for in our update today we're going to be able to have potentially 130 people meeting on each of these floors, and so, when you imagine the thoughtful design, the thoughtful construction, the various processes that we have, the thinking that we go behind in terms of making sure that we have space sufficient for the community. You can just imagine how much of a wonderful amenity, our cupertino library is going to end up being, even more so relative to what it is right now.

A

So, thank you very much for being here today. We're very excited to be able to bring you over into the expansion space, and so why don't we without further ado go into the courtyard and take a look at how it's going from the outside. Initially.

A

All right, so here we are in the courtyard, obviously we're not getting a whole lot of imagery with regard to the actual expansion space, because we have the uh the wall here temporarily cordoned off.

A

It was very thoughtfully arted out, so to speak to coin a verb, but for now what you can see is the fact that it is in fact two stories and we're going to have a significant amount of additional vertical space.

A

Here now, one of the features of the new expansion space is going to be a wall that opens up the bottom floor to the entirety of the courtyard, and so it's not just going to be the roughly 1500 1600 square feet of space on the bottom floor that can be configured into 900 square foot and about 650 square foot spaces.

A

It's also going to be the fact that you're going to have a lot of you know good interflow, between what we have currently as the courtyard, which is a nice amenity, to have certainly within the middle of our library structure, but also you can think about how we're interconnecting this space as an event space- and you know maybe people want to go outside, breathe the fresh air a little bit and kind of think about what they're you know, interrelating and conversing about within that space over there.

A

So susan, of course, you know having managed the projects from the construction phase to now. You know I. I know that you have a lot of good insights into the specifics of the interesting features that we'll be revealing uh momentarily yeah.

B

Well, it's one of the things you highlighted was that there is this big opening and it's gonna. It was a. It was a priority in the design once they started, laying out the meeting room spaces to have that connection between outdoor and indoor, because it really changes how we can use the space, and it just makes this space the courtyard a little bit more lively.

B

And it's just it's exciting. You can see from here and there's not a whole lot you can see from here, but that now we have a two-story connection and how that connects the two wings. What you can't see yet is that they're going to be there's plastic up, but they will be installing a curtain wall, so there will be a nice glass curtain while we've got as much glass as possible in the front here and also on the back of the building, so that you can see the redwoods.

B

I think it's also important to talk about how this courtyard's going to be improved because we're adding an art wall and a donor wall that the cupertino library foundation has had a lot to do with. I don't know if you want to talk about that.

C

Yeah, so the artwork will be over there. You know currently covering the green and the donor world will be right over in the front, and our community really loves this library. The space and the you know those two wars will show. You know how they are love it. I.

B

Think it's a really exciting development to have that art in this space and that cupertino values, art and creativity. So do you want to move through? Oh absolutely, let's go on inside then all right, so everybody has their hard hats, because safety.

A

B

First, so you can see here. This is where the operable wall is, it's called a nanowall, it's a trade name, but it's going to go from one into the other, and it can. The doors will slide to one side and stack. It's going to be a great space, and this will all be paved.

B

One of the designers said you can have a dance night out here. I don't know if it's that big, but it should be nice, and this is the art wall you're, going to have glass curtain wall and then that's going to be a stucco with the art on it and what you see in front of you are the meeting rooms.

B

This is this can be one large meeting room front to back or it can be split off from each other, so that we can have two separate functions. Going on off to your left is the pantry, which is just a little space that has a refrigerator and a sink and a countertop so that we can serve refreshments at some events beyond that, and this will have a wall in front of us.

B

You can't see it from the meeting room, but there's a set of bathrooms so because it's a large what we call assembly space, you have to provide enough bathrooms for those types of functions. So we have new bathrooms on both floors and when we get into the space, you'll see that they're starting to put in jip board they've got the electrical in it's really starting to shape up to be what it's going to look like in the end, they've got the big hvac ducts going through up there and they'll have a wood ceiling below that.

B

So it's just starting to take shape, and hopefully you can imagine a little bit of what it can be as we walk through absolutely.

A

Thanks susan and then the other thing to imagine is the fact that you do have a big plastic sheet in the back there. But of course, as susan mentioned, a lot of this is going to be window and uh and clear walls, and so we'll be able to take the beauty of the redwood grove and share it with the patrons of the library, both on the first floor and the second floor. Very different vantage points, of course.

A

But previously when we had what was essentially a kind of smallish interconnecting bridge, you didn't really get that sense of the redwood grove and so we'll certainly be able to take good advantage of that again. With this so-called nana wall.

A

Here open we'll be able to interconnect the entirety of the courtyard space uh with, what's happening inside of here uh again we're talking about about 650 square feet and 900 square feet in the back and a total potential audience uh in a lecture style, seating space of 130., so that that is really going to be quite significant.

A

When you consider the fact that you could divide that into two spaces, but those spaces could actually further be subdivided in terms of walls that aren't necessarily as permanent, but just the imagination abounds when we think about things like um the hackathon and various things that we've been trying to piece together with. um You know a little bit more of an improvised approach. This is actually going to be an extremely appropriate space for any number of events in cupertino, so gene any thoughts from the library foundation or library commission's perspective on this, the.

C

Extra meeting space- you know the community was asking for this for a long time, so it's really exciting that we now have a multiple meeting space in this new edition. Also, you know when there is no meetings there will be uh when, during the time no meetings, there will be additional seating space for patrons to use. So it's a great opportunity.

A

Absolutely I mean yeah, it's good for those finals periods when people are.

C

Studying exactly study rooms.

A

So, what's this space here, what are we standing in.

B

This is the pantry and.

A

B

Just a tiny minor little room, but this will all be counters with the sink, and this is just kind of the back of house functional room, great.

C

B

This is the back of the art wall. Look at this. This is the.

A

B

uh Bracing that we had to put in it's major wow.

A

This is not uh any kind of wood frame here.

B

No, it's quite solid. This also gives a connection back to the staff area. So sorry, this gives a connection back to the staff area as well. So it's a it's a functional thing. So if we go over to the side, we'll see the bathroom area we'll see if we can see plumbing and electrical and all those things great.

A

And so susan, is there a similar type of space like this? On the second floor,.

B

Exactly yes, this is it's almost almost exactly the same footprint right, yeah, just for all intents and purposes, it's the same, there's a pantry and then there's bathrooms right next to it and the storage area and then there's the stairs great okay,.

A

B

You're interested you can see the plans on the website on our cupertino.org website, there's a library page and on there there's plans and renderings and all sorts of things. So you can connect the tour with that.

A

That's absolutely right: it's an incredible page full of information, for we have our rfp yeah. We have all the various bids from the design build team from the history.

B

Yeah and you can see the renderings from the bridging.

A

Architectures, uh architects diagrams, so maybe we should go upstairs. Oh, let's go upstairs.

A

So susan, this is the second floor. Space is pretty similar to the first floor of space. I think we actually got it flipped right because there's a bit of a lobby.

B

Here, right, you're right: this is the where the setback is.

A

And, of course, we're holding on to the study area right, the teen studying room on.

B

The other side there's another room on the other side of this wall that can still be used. It hasn't been affected at all yeah.

A

Okay, great and this.

B

Will connect to the stacks.

A

So, let's take a look since we're here, and this room is a bit less active right now. Yes, I think we're standing within the 900 square foot, part of the room that can partition off yes, and so, as we go here, we'll end up we'll end up kind of in this part of the partition right right. This marks, I think, the difference between the larger space and the somewhat smaller space off to my left here, yeah.

B

You can see the header, we call it that will hold the doors that will slide on that track. Excellent.

A

B

Can open and close you can see all the supports and all the hvac work the interesting well for me, it's interesting this black stuff on the ceiling. It's probably hard to see, is an acoustical treatment so that the sound in the room isn't really bouncy. So you.

A

Can tell actually yeah it.

B

Dampens it quite a bit, and the other interesting part just now in the process is that this has got a lot more chipboard up here. So that also helps quiet things down.

A

Of course, yeah, of course, yeah, so any features that we want to share with regard to the uh the av system, anything built into the the framework of this, so to speak, where we might put a hanging screen that goes down or anything like that. Well,.

B

There will be a professional projector here that drops well, it stays down and there's going to be a screen in front of well there's a screen in front of the windows. There's also monitors on the wall.

B

Oh wonderful, so you can have different presentation modes and there's also going to be another monitor over here in the smaller area, so that, if you have two meetings going on at once right, you can have different types of presentations in those rooms or just put in some tables and chairs and have study rooms or a meeting or anything like that. Yeah.

A

Great collaborative.

B

Space in my business of architecture, these are called multi-function rooms because.

C

It's not just a.

B

Meeting room: it's not.

C

B

Study room, it can be both, so you have to plan the acoustics and the electrical and the av all those things for either of those all of those functions.

C

So very flexible right that you know you can have half of the room. Have a meetings. Other half will be study.

B

Rooms, yeah should be nice, the whole design yeah this one should be nice and a great view back to the courtyard which you can think about. You can't really see right now and, of course, the redwoods as well. We can only see the shadows right now, because the plastic's up, we were in the rainy season, so.

A

That's right, yeah, I believe, as part of our rfp, for the space we asked for blackout shades so that there wouldn't be too much light. If there was a presentation right and people needed to be able to see whatever was projecting or.

B

We do know that we have window shades in the project that match the window shades that are already in the library we tried to whatever already existed, for the building use as much as we could, and that's one of the most important things to get right is the window shades and make sure there's blackout, shades that are also available so that you can have a presentation during the day. Well,.

A

Thank you both for the check-in today and we look so forward to being able to deliver this space to the cupertino community. We stand now at the beginning of november, so susan, what are we looking at in terms of the construction projections.

B

So we're we're projecting to be done with construction at the end of january wow.

A

B

Hope to have a grand opening soon after that, so we just have to cross our fingers that the pandemics supply chain problems don't continue to affect the project. So if everything goes as planned, then we'll open up sometime in february wow.

A

Amazing, it's just amazing yeah.

B

Well, thank you very much. Fist bump.

C

For success, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

A

Well, everyone thank you so much for joining qing, as well as susan and myself for this update to the cupertino library expansion. We thank our members of our city staff, as well as the city librarian, claire varesio and santa clara county library district, for bringing us to the point that we are here today in early november. We apparently have uh finished time fairly soon. Is that.

B

Yes, at the end of january, we should be done with construction if all things go as planned. Okay,.

A

C

A

B

Ground opening, sometime soon after that, maybe in february.

A

Sounds great and gene: do you think that the library, commission and library, foundation and community will be up to ushering in this new era, with meeting space in the library.

C

We will be very excited to use this new space. Indeed,.

A

The library well, thank you very much. Everyone please be sure to visit the cupertino.org website. You'll find more information than you ever imagined possible for this particular expansion space we're in such an exciting time in cupertino. This is just the very beginning of amazing things to come, we'll see in a couple of months. Thank you very much for joining us here today.