12/12/2023
The Board of Trustees of the Friends of the Coronado Public Library sent this letter to the City Council explaining our position on the Winn Room Renovation and why the Board supports Option 4 for a Winn Room that will support our incredible community for the next 50 years:
December 11, 2023
The Honorable Richard Bailey
The Honorable Members of the Coronado City Council
Tina Friend, City Manager, City of Coronado
1825 Strand Way, Coronado, CA 92118
Dear Mayor Bailey, Members of the Coronado City Council and City Manager Friend:
I am writing you in my capacity as President of the Friends of the Coronado Library and on behalf of our Board of Trustees to express our support for the City adopting a plan for Winn Room renovation that provides the Library and our community with a state of the art civic engagement, celebration and performance center that will effectively serve the needs of our community for decades to come.
The City and Library have been considering different plans to improve the Winn Room since the last significant update to the Room decades ago. Over the past several years the Library and City were actively considering several plans to renovate and/or expand the Winn Room but this discussion was disrupted by the Pandemic. The City Council is now in the process of reconsidering options for improving the Winn Room. We believe your deliberation should keep in mind the following points:
The Centrality of the Winn Room To Coronado Community Engagement:
The Winn Room has rightfully earned the title “The place where Coronado gathers.” It is not an exaggeration to state that almost every resident of Coronado has participated in an event (or dozens) in this facility. The Winn Room space at the library serves multiple roles at the heart of our Library’s mission as a center of the Coronado community’s educational, social, and civic engagement. The Winn Room provides space for numerous cultural, educational and civic events that enrich our community. The Winn Room serves as a portal for visitors to the rest of Library, encouraging further exploration and use of the numerous educational and cultural services the Library provides our community, directly expanding the Library’s reach and impact to the benefit of all Coronadans.
The Winn Room’s setting, with three walls of windows looking out onto the idyllic North Spreckels Park setting, makes the venue uniquely peaceful, beautiful and inviting compared to all other Coronado meeting spaces. The Winn Room is our community living room where our residents come together for all manner of community, cultural and entertainment events ranging from book readings by nationally recognized authors to performances by acclaimed musicians, singers and actors to Holiday celebrations by community members and groups. The Winn Room is our community dining room table, where our residents come together to discuss the vast array of issues confronting Coronado and can work together to achieve common cause and consensus. The Winn Room is the site of numerous candidate and issue forums and political debates. Through ongoing programs like the Coronado Round Table, our residents come together in the Winn Room to discuss the critical events of our times.
The Winn Room is the City of Coronado’s primary Reception hall, the city facility that more people from communities outside of Coronado will regularly visit. As such the Winn Room is our community welcome center, providing a first impression of our community to the rest of San Diego and to visitors to Coronado from around the state, country and world.
The Winn Room, far from being simply a visual arts or performance space, is the single most used Coronado municipal public meeting venue. Every year the Winn Room hosts over 400 events (with at least one major event per day) organized/sponsored by dozens of community and regional sponsors and organizations attracting more than 15,000 members of the Coronado and broader San Diego regional community. There is simply no other municipal public space in Coronado that provides residents with the versatility for holding such a breadth and quantity of events. Moreover, the Winn Room is the only meeting/event space in Coronado that residents and local organizations can access at no cost. The Winn Room is a symbol of Coronado’s commitment to building an inclusive, equitable and vibrant community.
The Pressing Need to Upgrade and Modernize The Winn Room:
Our City Living Room/Dining room is, by any measure, looking pretty shabby these days. The Winn Room was last upgraded more than thirty years ago. The physical infrastructure of the room (HVAC, Roof, window coverings, bathrooms, kitchen, storage space) are all in need of substantial repair/renovation/replacement. The AV system (speakers and video displays) are technological years out of date and all the worse for repeated wear. Programs in the Winn Room repeatedly run into the challenge of trying to present HD 5.1 Dolby Digital Media on DVD-Stereo equipment. The non-auditorium style low ceiling of the room does not provide for a high-quality space in terms of either acoustics or visual presentation. The seating capacity for the room is, at best, a crowded (and, depending on the weather, a bit stifling) 135, which precludes the Library from hosting local, regional and national quality events that could easily attract over 200 community residents. In short, the Winn Room is basically a 1970s facility serving 2020s audiences (which would be like being a 1920s facility when the Winn Room was last updated.)
The Absence of Realistic Municipal Alternatives to a Renovated Winn Room:
The Winn Room’s situation within the City of Coronado Public Library--the crown jewel of the Emerald City’s public facilities—overlooking a bucolic park setting and in a central location easily accessible by all city residents provides our Coronado community with a unique, irreplaceable venue.
Holding Library events at City meeting spaces outside of the Library is problematic. First, none of the other city facilities offer the functionality, capacity and availability that a renovated Winn Room would offer. The John D. Spreckels Center’s Grand Room was not designed as a state-of-the-art performance or meeting space. With doors opening on the frequently used lawn bowling facility, gymnasium height ceilings and limited acoustics the hall is more than adequate for luncheons, yoga classes and craft fairs but not for deliberative discussions, musical ensembles or cultural and literary events. Holding numerous Library events to the Grand Room directly challenges the ability of the Center to address its core mission of serving Coronado residents who are 50+ years of age.
The Nautilus Room can seat up to 250 people but, like the Spreckels Center, was not designed as presentation/performance space but rather as an event/reception space. Located within the Recreation Center, the Room is more than a mile away from the Coronado Library. Using this space to host a significant number of Library programs would create substantial staffing and logistical issues for the Library effectively negating any advantages the Room might present in alternative to the Winn Room. The Nautilus Room is a heavily booked facility making accommodation of Library and community events difficult to arrange except far in advance and, for most groups currently using the Winn Room, would require fees (of, for many groups, a prohibitive nature) precluding its use as an alternative to the Winn Room. Waiving fees would negatively impact revenues the facility generate for the City, reductions that would need be offset elsewhere in the City’s operations budget. The ability of the Recreation Center to generate additional city revenues through use fees was, indeed, part of the justification for the building of the Recreation Center when it was proposed. The Coronado Library (and Winn Room) are already mandated to provide public space without charge as part of its core mission as chartered by the City of Coronado.
Distributing events coordinated or hosted by the Library to other City facilities would create an inefficient use of Library employee time (as they shuttle back and forth to satellite facilities) and disrupt the natural synergy of bringing attendees into the Library proper to explore its services, thereby diminishing the Library’s ability to achieve its community mission, as commissioned by the City of Coronado, to meet the informational, recreational, and cultural needs of the community and to actively promote reading, life-long learning, and the pursuit of knowledge.
Community Support for Modernizing the Winn Room via Option 4
We, the Friends of the Coronado Library, support improvements to the Winn Room including:
· Increasing capacity of the Winn Room to 200 seats to accommodate performances, forums and educational/informational events for all Coronado community audiences;
· Installing a state-of-the-art Media system accommodating all manner of live and recorded media and reconfiguring/installing up to date acoustical systems;
· Reconfiguring the Winn Room ceiling to replace 1980s tiling with an acoustically and aesthetically superior ceiling at a height level promoting a more spacious and visually appealing venue that will accentuate all programs held there;
· Maintaining the peaceful park setting of the Winn Room;
To that end the Board of the Friends of the Coronado Library has formally endorsed Option 4 (formerly known as “Option B”), was the best option to meet the above criteria and provide Coronado with the opportunity to create a public space at our Library for the next generation – and beyond. At the last public hearing (held via zoom on March 24, 2021) Option B was the clear consensus choice of the 70+ community members attending. (See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3EJ4EJiaAk)
We, the Friends of the Coronado Library know there is tremendous community support for our Library and its programs. We know that the dozens of groups holding hundreds of programs bringing in thousands of attendees every year at the Winn Room would benefit from and support improving the facility. Moreover, we are certain that, with proper organization, tremendous opportunity exists to approach numerous individuals, organizations and businesses in our community to become significant sponsors of a Winn Room renovation, substantially underwriting costs to the City of Coronado. The Friends of the Library stands ready to partner with the City and like-minded community organizations to make such underwriting a reality.
We the Friends of the Coronado Library will fully support and work to implement whatever decision is reached by the Coronado City Council regarding renovation of the Winn Room. We simply ask that your deliberation be thorough, transparent and inclusive of community viewpoints and need.
We finally ask that the members of the City Council keep the following in mind during your deliberations on this issue: We may not all go to the same houses of worship in Coronado, nor send our children to the same schools nor shop at the same stores, or use all of the same city recreational facilities. But everyone in Coronado at some point finds themselves in the Coronado Library Winn Room, the true center of Coronado community life. It is our hope we can treat the space with the deference and respect it deserves.
With Respect,
Carl Luna
President, Friends of the Coronado Public Library
CC:
Shaun Briley, Director, Coronado Library
Coronado Library Board of Trustees
Board of Trustees, Friends of the Coronado Public Library
