Children to benefit from Bonita library expansion

The Bonita-Sunnyside library is in for a $3.2 million expansion, the library’s first major renovation since it opened in 2005.

Currently the children’s area of the Bonita-Sunnyside library is only 500 square feet of the entire 10,000-square-foot building.  County Supervisor Greg Cox said given the high level of use and high percentage of children’s materials checked out at the library, an expansion of the children’s area was needed.

“We know since we’ve built that library the circulation has constantly gone up, the number of library cards that have been issued keeps going up,” he said. “There is a demand in the community, a need in the community, fortunately when we designed that library we had the ability to have some space for a future expansion.”

Cox said children’s material accounts for more than 30 percent of the library’s circulation. For the month of May, the Bonita-Sunnyside library had a circulation of 33,900.

Bonita-Sunnyside library serves the entire South Bay region.

An expansion area of 3,200 square feet would accommodate both a new children’s area as large as the one built in Imperial Beach and a relocated teen area with larger space.

Cox said in his district he opened a brand new library in Lincoln Acres and just recently opened a brand new library in Imperial Beach. Cox said now was the time to focus on the Bonita-Sunnyside library at 4375 Bonita Road.
Marisa Lowe, branch manager at the Bonita-Sunnyside library, said an expanded children’s area is needed.

“Bonita customers and the community as a whole would really benefit from the adddition of a more dynamic children’s area to the library,” she said.

The library has story time for children every day and the expansion of story time will take place in a more welcoming environment, Lowe said.

The expansion will cost about $3.5 million, which has already been included in the budget, Cox said. He said the money is included in the county’s capital improvement program that would be taking action this month for fiscal year 2017-2018.

Talks of expansion started last year when Cox was able to get $100,000 in funds appropriated to begin the process to do preliminary designs in construction drawings to get a better idea of what is needed and total costs.  As of now, there are not any renderings available for the project.

The county of San Diego has 34 libraries in its library system. The county has built 11 new libraries in the last 11 years.

“So we’ve been putting our money where our mouth is as far as building new libraries and expanding our libraries,” Cox said.

The hope, Cox said, is to get construction underway in early 2018 with expansion completed before the end of 2018.

He said the library would remain open during construction.

“Libraries are still an integral part of government services,” Cox said. “That Bonita-Sunnyside library is the heart and soul of the community.”