BOUNTIFUL—The South Branch Library is owned and operated by Davis County but sits on the Bountiful City campus next to the South Davis Senior Center. In turn, Davis County owns the property located directly west of the senior center. In a work session Dec. 9, the City Council discussed a potential land exchange with the purpose of improving safety and efficiency of library parking.

“What we’d like to talk about are next steps related to the Davis County Bountiful Branch Library being renovated,” said City Administrator Gary Hill. “Most of you know that this has been a long process for Davis County to identify what needed to be done and what they ultimately wanted to do.”

Several months ago the county decided that they preferred to renovate the existing building rather than build a new one because they, in large part, felt like they would have more square footage by renovating the existing one than they would by trying to build a new one on the new site, he said. “After the commission made that decision they hired an architect and got to work identifying some site improvements. One of the first things that they recognized was that vehicle circulation around the library is a little bit challenging.”

The current situation there is the library driveway entrance which is one way off of Main Street, said Hill. “On the left-hand side by the library you have the book drop off and then angled parking on the right. It’s awkward because anybody coming out of that has to cross the main driveway entrance into the city campus which happens to share parking with the senior center and then a lot of library patrons have to park across from both of those driveways near the field.”

Pedestrian access has also been kind of a concern for the library and the city for a number of years, he said. “Those were two issues that were a little bit concerning to us. In addition to that we have a crosswalk currently that moves almost diagonally across Main Street and can be a bit troublesome for people.”

The architects came and had a conversation with the planning and engineering staff with the desire of maybe making some changes to the footprint, said Hill. “Lloyd (Cheney, city engineer) had the opportunity to suggest that if they were to take some of our property south of the building it might provide an opportunity to close the driveway access and limit some of the challenges we have with vehicles coming on and off of Main Street and the conflict with the crosswalk there.”

“UTA is proposing the BRT line here on Main Street,” said Cheney. “We have seen plans which locate a bus stop along the library frontage to the north of the driveway. We don’t know exactly whether it’s going to land on the north side of the driveway that goes back into the service area of their building or if it will be south of that but it is planned along the library frontage.”

So moving that crosswalk would probably be opportune to just make the circulation for the bus in the future better, he said. “But also by closing the entrance to the library, we’re removing one more set of conflict points. If you had traffic exiting both of those driveways at the same time, one person wanting to make a left turn, one person wanting to make a right turn, you’re going to introduce a bigger chance for conflict.”

It’s in a much better position to consolidate access at this point and have everybody enter in and out of the city campus in one drive approach, said Cheney. “It also does a lot for the configuration of the parking in front of the library because the library is proposing having parking that’s basically north and south with an aisle separating those parking stalls. So we provide better circulation and much safer circulation for pedestrians and to the library.”

“So the proposal was initially for them to come and see if we would lease property to them or sell property to them,” said Hill. “As we discussed the benefits to the library we thought this might also be an opportunity through a land swap to provide some additional property to the west of the senior center.”

The parking that currently exists to the west of that set of parking stalls is actually on the county’s parcel, he said. “So it was the idea of our engineer to trade that property so that we would also have some additional parking and make our parcel slightly larger there to the west.”

The county has proposed a land swap in which Bountiful City would receive approximately 5,500 square feet of county-owned property located directly west of the senior center parcel, said Hill. “In exchange the city would convey an equivalent 5,500 square feet of land to the county on the south side of the library parcel.”

Hill said during a work session the Davis County Commissioners supported moving forward with the land swap and directed their staff to continue coordinating with Bountiful City. “So we’re just looking for a head nod or a thumbs up from the council. Seeing that, we’ll let the county know and we’ll keep you posted. The county folks have been great to work with.”