Politics

SD City Council Votes To Go Ahead With New Central Library

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published June 28, 2010 at 3:06 PM PDT

This story was published more than 13 years ago.

Artistic rendering of planned downtown library as provided by the office of the architect working on the project.

SD City Council Votes To Go Ahead With New Central Library

San Diego City Council has voted to go ahead and build a new central library downtown. The building will break ground in August, but millions of dollars still need to be raised to complete the project.

The idea of a new central library for San Diego has been talked about since the 1970s, and site selection began in the 1990s. The vote to go ahead and start phase one of construction this summer is prompted by a state deadline to break ground or lose $20 million in funding.

The first phase will cost more than $150 million and the city has thrown $80 million of public money into the hat. Philanthropists have come forward with another $40 million.

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As Council President Ben Hueso said, the city will depend on more generosity from its citizens to get the library finished by 2014.

"It's going to require all of us as a community to make this commitment to make this project happen eventually," he said.

Council members said one benefit of starting the project soon is that it will give 1,000 construction workers a job. The contract requires that 85 percent of those workers be local San Diegans

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.