At last, Woodside Library lot landscaping can start At last, Woodside Library lot landscaping can start (March 09, 2005)

By Andrea Gemmet

Almanac Staff Writer

Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither was the plan to revamp the Woodside Library's parking lot.

After a year and a half's worth of revisions, a $250,000 project to beautify the lot and add five parking spaces and a wheelchair ramp can get under way.

It fell to the Woodside Town Council to tweak the plan after a hopeless impasse snarled the interested parties -- the volunteer Woodside Landscape Committee, an adjacent neighbor to the library, and town staff.

"You see on the news all the hoops they had to go through with the Bay Bridge design, but I think we've got our own little Bay Bridge right here," said Councilman Pete Sinclair at the February 8 council meeting. "We take a little library parking lot and make a federal case of it."

On the face of it, the project is pretty simple. Pretty-up the front of the branch library on Woodside Road, rejigger the number of parking spaces from 18 to 23, and improve handicap access.

The estimated $250,000 cost is funded with $50,000 from an anonymous donor to the Woodside Landscape Committee and $200,000 from a library improvement fund of tax revenues.

But as is so often the case when a project appears straightforward and unassailable, there are hidden complications.

A glitch in the town's noticing procedures prevented adjacent neighbors James and Stephanie MacDonald from hearing about the project before the Town Council approved it in October 2003. The next month, the council agreed to reopen the matter. The MacDonalds, whose house sits just 10 feet away from the property line it shares with the library, said the original 28-space parking plan, the lighting layout and landscaping would negatively affect them.

Eight or nine redrafts later, the plan brought to the Town Council appeared to please no one. Town staff objected to the lighting and the plant choices, the MacDonalds protested the sunlight-blocking design which placed 17 trees and tall shrubs along their fence line, and the landscape architect was in high dudgeon. Rounding out the cast was a frustrated bunch of volunteers from the Landscape Committee.

Committee members were especially piqued at a last-minute staff recommendation to replace their plants with fire- and drought-resistant species.

"The proposed plan that we've provided is a beautiful plan, and much thought and effort have gone into it," said Kimberly McMorrow of the Landscape Committee.

Town Manager Susan George apologized, but said the project would be a unique opportunity to create a prototype garden that complies with the town's fire-management plan.

"It's unreasonable to expect infinite patience from volunteers," said Mr. Sinclair. "It's not native, it's not minimalist, but I don't think it should be. The point is to make the library pretty so people will go to it."

However, the council did delete the 17 trees along the MacDonalds' property line, on a 5-0 vote, with Paul Goeld absent and Sue Boynton recusing herself. Ms. Boynton said she was on the board of the Woodside Community Foundation, which manages donor funds for the Woodside Landscape Committee.

Kent Dewell, the town engineer, will revise the "excessive" lighting plan.

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