Newest library checks out fine

All week, kids in the neighborhood have been riding their bikes up to the new library on Delridge Way in West Seattle and banging on the windows, wanting to know when it was going to open.

Adults have walked by, waved, and asked the same thing.

And yesterday when the building opened to a packed house, it was greeted like a dear and long-awaited friend.

"It was worth all the work," said Vivian McLean, for whom the complex, which includes the library and low-income apartments, is named.

For years she and others lobbied to bring a branch library to the working-class neighborhood on the east side of West Seattle.

The Delridge neighborhood never had a library of its own. The closest it got was a makeshift arrangement with the social-service agency down the road, where some of the receptionists would store a few books for people to borrow.

"For a long time this has been a forgotten neighborhood," McLean said. "It's a neighborhood of immigrants, which is good, but we let outsiders tell us we weren't good and that we didn't deserve things."

The $3 million, 5,600-square-foot library is the third project of 27 in a citywide plan to revamp, revitalize and remodel Seattle's entire library system. The $196 million project was approved by taxpayers in 1998.

The Delridge Library is on the first floor of a three-story building that also holds 19 low-income apartments, a unique feature among the city's libraries.

The Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association, a not-for-profit developer, also designed the library with a large meeting space so it could serve as the center of the community.

"This is a wonderful thing for this neighborhood," said Bridget Culligan, whose company designed the library system's new logo. "There is no town hall anymore and the library now fills that function."

Community activists say their neighborhood is often one of the last to get attention for things like street repair and other enhancements.

"One of the things we've learned from this is that we have to know what we want and go get it," McLean said. "Nobody's going to come and give it to you."

Now that it's open, residents expect the library to be a big draw. At the NewHolly Library, which also is in a less-affluent neighborhood, book circulation went up more than 70 percent within months of its 1999 expansion and remodel.

Within hours of the Delridge Library's opening yesterday, hundreds of people, all colors and ages, poured in to check out the place and check out books. Many also were getting their first library cards.

"This is cool," said Niron Hot, 9, who had a Dragonball Z video-game strategy guide under his arm.

"It's great," said Promise Curtis, 8, who walked there with her sister and was looking for a story with a happy ending.

With more than 20,000 books, videos and CDs, there is something on everything from tractors to tigers, and there were signs, too, that the librarians have worked with the community to customize the selection of books.

There are books in Cambodian and Laotian, Thai and Arabic. There are books on citizenship, single parenting and going back to school.

"This is lovely and it's nice to see this neighborhood gets something new for a change," said Dorathea MacMillan, a resident for more than 50 years.

"This is so exciting," said Miracle Curtis, 11. "There's so many books here and I love to read!"

Christine Clarridge: 206-464-8983 or cclarridge@seattletimes.com.