It wasn’t that long ago that the Los Altos City Council and the nonprofit Friends of the Library of Los Altos were at loggerheads over Friends’ continued use of facilities space at the Los Altos Civic Center. The nonprofit faced the prospect of discontinuing its work after more than 45 years of collecting, sorting and selling used books to benefit the local libraries.
“If the city’s goal is to destroy us, they are being very successful,” one member said in a moment of despair.
This was after the council last August denied Friends’ request for a 10-year license agreement to use the civic center, and encouraged the group to find a location off-site. For some, that could have spelled the end of the all-volunteer group that was generating more than $100,000 in annual revenue to support the local libraries. Some members pointed out they needed to do their work in one place, and no other alternative location was a suitable solution.
Enter Los Altos City Manager Gabriel Engeland. He helped bring all involved parties together to work on a solution, including the Santa Clara County Library District, which runs the Los Altos main library and Woodland Branch.
“This problem with the Friends has been festering for about three or four years,” said Elayne Dauber, a former Los Altos Hills City Council member and acting president of the Friends group. “Our new city manager came in and made it clear to library administration that the city needed them to deal with the problem. The library did not want to lose us.”
So, library officials found space for Friends’ work – approximately 730 square feet in a little-used area in the southeast part of the main library. Plans are underway to separate the Friends space from the rest of the library by walling off the area.Â
Friends will use the new space for sorting books that come in. The group has two sheds elsewhere at the civic center for book storage that members will retain.
“Gabe brought clarity and decisiveness to the situation, and things have been moving forward ever since,” Dauber said. “I hope everyone in Los Altos realizes how fortunate we are to have Gabe Engeland as our city manager.”
A win-win solution
The sorting space is smaller than the 900-plus square feet the Friends group used to have back when it used space in the old Hillview Community Center. Hillview was demolished in 2019 to make way for the new Los Altos Community Center.
“Friends will end up with less square footage than we currently have, but we are very excited about being together once again, and in the library,” Dauber said. “We will adapt to make it work.”
Friends will vacate another small portion of the library the group is currently using, which will be restored for regular library users. Dauber expects work to begin by June.
Bryant Bao, acting community librarian, said the new area comprises “approximately four rows of shelving that can easily be repurposed.”
Bao said the library district is responsible for all interior updates in the library, and the district will cover the costs. He added that the timeline for work will depend on the availability of contractors.
“With this relocation of the Friends of the Library from the area at the city hall-facing entrance to the southeast area, the Los Altos library will be able to repurpose the entrance area to offer more seating for public use,” Bao said, indicating a win-win for both the Friends group and the library.
Bao praised the partnership between the city of Los Altos and Friends of the Library.
“We worked in close collaboration with both groups to find the best solution to support the Friends’ continued operations,” he said.
Tentative plans call for Friends members to begin moving out of their temporary space after their next used-book sale, scheduled May 20-22. They will use the Los Altos Youth Center for an interim period prior to relocating to the new library space.
The library will create a new magazine-newspaper reading area in the space vacated by Friends – an area known as the Corral.
“We hope to be able to move (to the new space) in early July,” Dauber said. “That’s the ideal.”
