The Liberty Park library building now has three possibilities for its future use.

It could become a cultural arts center, an environmental interpretive center or an extended community center.

Those were the concepts presented by the library steering committee at an open house for the community Wednesday evening.

As the steering committee unveiled its efforts, proponents to keep the downtown library where it is may also have an answer to their efforts in a month. If sufficient signatures are validated, an initiative they circulated could go before the Renton City Council for a decision in March.

The small number of those who came to the open house seemed content with what they saw of the proposed designs but also wondered about the petition issue looming in the background. Renton resident Laurie Beden liked the concepts she saw.

She was drawn to the environmental interpretive center but found aspects of each of the concepts she thought could be incorporated into one idea.

“I think it would be a great draw not for just Renton citizens, but everybody,” Beden said. “I love heron, I love nature and that would be really exciting.” She is on the Renton Library Advisory Board for the City of Renton.

Beden called the current downtown Renton library “dark and dated.”

“So, I think this would be a perfect opportunity to leverage two facilities,” she said. “To have a brand new library and to have a city-owned asset like this, it’s just such a jewel.” Ed Prince, a newly elected Renton City Council member, would not say which concept he like best.

Instead, he said he was impressed by them all.

Prince said he wanted to keep an open mind about the plans until they are presented officially to the council at the end of March or in early April.

“I know this committee has put in a lot of hard work, so I wanted to come down and be supportive and see where they were,” Prince said.

Renton Highlands resident Andee Jorgensen thought the library building would make a good cultural arts center.

“When I’m going through downtown, this is the place where I stop and hang out,” Jorgensen said. “It’s a nice park to b around and that building would be the perfect place for kids to have classes for art.”

She included teenagers and adults in that mix of suitable patrons for such a center.

Jorgensen was not as hung up as others on the library’s move to a site near the Piazza on Third Avenue, because she said she doesn’t go there that much. She did, however, grow up going to Liberty Park. She was a lifeguard at the park’s swimming pool and she now goes to baseball games and does the river walk trail.

Phyllis Forister, a strong proponent of keeping the library where it is, checked out the proposed ideas for the library’s new use.

She is still concerned that the shopkeepers near the library will miss out of the foot traffic of library patrons.

“There are cities that would die to have the library in a park like we have already with the trail that goes by there, with all the things for children to use,” she said. “It’s a whole neighborhood.”

An initiative-raising effort, which Forister was a part of, recently had signatures submitted to the King County Elections Office for validation.

Larry Warren, the City of Renton attorney, said the City council has three options if the signatures are validated and submitted next to the council.

The council can either adopt the initiative as proposed, put it on a ballot or refuse to act on it for an illegality. If the signatures are validated and the initiative is submitted to the council, it would cast doubt on the library’s ability to move to the new location on Third Avenue, Warren said. But, he added, it would all depend on a vote of the people.

He sees problems with the way the initiative is worded currently because it doesn’t give a framework or hold the council to a specific timeframe.

But, he says, “it’s in the political arena and politicians are going to do what they’re going to do with it.”

In the 35 years that Warren has been the city’s attorney, he could not recall another initiative like this one. The information he’s received from the county elections office puts any action on the initiative about a month away.

If the initiative is put before the council, Warren said, he would hate for council members to act on it in one meeting. He hopes they would decide what to do with the measure in two City Council meetings.

The King County Library System, meanwhile, is moving forward with its design process for the library.

“We have an agreement with the city and we’re not anticipating anything will stop it,” said Bill Ptacek, KCLS director. The issue of the petition is between the city and the petitioners, he said.

Ptacek did not completely rule out the possibility that it could impede KCLS’ plans for the downtown Renton library in the future.

Adam Smith, library steering committee member, volunteered to be part of the new use project for the site and said he is vested in the effort, if the building is not going to be a library.

“I just hope people don’t find out six months from now that we had all these ideas,” Smith said at the open house. “And the one that they liked out of these, they didn’t come down and voice their opinion.”

The lack of people out of more than 90,000 Renton residents who have participated or given feedback has been an “eye-opener,” he said.

LIBRARY FUTURE

The City of Renton is hosting a online survey to get feedback and opinions on the downtown library building from the community. The survey is available through Feb. 21.