Architecture & Design: Roy
Branching Out
Weber County opens new library in Roy
by Ann Poore
The Weber County Library System took advantage of the extra day this leap year to unveil their newest branch and home to their regional Headquarters Library at 2039 W. 4000 South in Roy.
The new brick and glass building, in a large park setting, features 52,000 square feet of space for patrons, including multiple seating areas and meeting rooms, a cafe, black box theater and gallery space. In addition, a 20,000-square-foot mezzanine, where support services are located, overlooks a spacious area with ample room for the branch's collection of physical material.
Prescott Muir Architects (PMA) was selected through a competitive bidding process to design and oversee construction of the Headquarters/Southwest Branch Library which cost some $45 million to construct. As the architects for Weber County's Ogden Valley and Pleasant Valley branches, PMA is well versed in designing “third place libraries,” says Lynnda Wangsgard, director of the Weber County Library system. She explains:
“Our first place is our home, if we are lucky enough to have one. Our second place is usually our work or school. Our third place is where we go to engage our community. Third place libraries recognize that learning is often a social activity where people come together to teach as well as to learn. Third place libraries are flexible, comfortable, and welcoming to everyone.”
A major focus of the new branch, as in many libraries, is children, with numerous features meant to attract them. One is a marvelous carved wooden whale sculpture acquired from the San Francisco Academy of Sciences. Whales are “favorites of children,” Wangsgard observes, “who revere these living creatures with the same awe they usually reserve only for dinosaurs.”
"The Gallery at Southwest" has more than 200 linear feet of exhibit space, as well as a 20-foot glass exhibit case. Gallery lighting augments the natural light that falls through clerestory windows, Wangsgard tells us.
Hyunmee Lee was chosen to provide the opening exhibit because she was selected by the Utah Division of Arts & Museums to receive their 2015 Fellowship Award for Visual Arts Excellence. “Her work,” says Wangsgard,”graces corporate and private collections on three continents.”
Suzanne Storer's ceramics were selected “because of her unique ability to capture the human image. Her portrait plates evoke deep feelings and are inspirational in their
ability to bring out both the ordinary and extraordinary in each of us,” Wangsgard states.
Storer was a 2015 semifinalist in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
The show runs until the end of April.
While the new branch has been open just over a week, Wangsgard says it has been visited by an average of 1,000 people a day who have borrowed more than 10,000 books. “Community members have frequented the facility to have lunch in the library cafe, and attend programs that have ranged from exercise classes to political meetings; from children's discovery times, to poetry slams. It is already working beautifully as a third place library.”
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15 Bytes: About Us
Our editorial contributors
The content you see in this magazine is provided by a fluid group of volunteers whose ability with the pen or camera is matched by their curiosity and enthusiasm for Utah's art world. 15 Bytes is an open community forum. If you are interested in writing an article, or providing images for our magazine contact editor Shawn Rossiter at editor@artistsofutah.org
 Simon Blundell is a Salt Lake City native and has studied art, communication, journalism, design, and advertising. He has an MFA and continues to explore photography and art in all its aspects. |
 Alisha Tolman Burton has been an independent graphic design and marketing consultant since 2008, and utilizes social media heavily for online marketing strategy, particularly for nonprofit projects, such as Art On Main and the Art Around the Corner Foundation. |
 Ruth Christensen writes full time for Imagine Learning, an education-based software company in Provo. She also works as a freelance writer, musician, and teacher after having taught vocal music for many years at BYU, UVU, and SUU. |
 Scotti Hill is a Salt Lake City-based art writer and curator who has taught art history courses at Westminster College and the University of Utah. She currently studies law at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the U. where she hopes to specialize in art law, intellectual property and copyright issues.
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 Hannah McBethstudied art history, classics, and Mediterranean archaeology before getting a master's at Cambridge University. She enjoys writing, hiking, and traveling to far-off places. Follow her on Twitter @hannahmcbee. |
 David G. Pace is a writer, literary critic and arts administrator. His creative work has appeared in Quarterly West, Dialogue and Sunstone. His novel Dream House on Golan Drive was published in 2015 by Signature Books. |
 Aaron T. Phillips teaches professional and technical communication in the Management department at the University of Utah. His dissertation research focused on the rhetoric surrounding the reintroduction and recovery of the gray wolf in the western United States. His creative nonfiction has appeared in “Mountain Gazette” and “Cross Country Skier” magazine, as well as in various local publications. |
 Ann Poore is a freelance writer and editor who spent most of her career at The Salt Lake Tribune. She also worked for City Weekly and has written for such publications as Utah Business and Salt Lake magazines. |
 Shawn Rossiter, a native of Boston, was raised on the East Coast. He has degrees in English, French and Italian literature. A professional artist and writer, he founded Artists of Utah in 2001 and is editor of its magazine, 15 Bytes. |
 Portia Snow is a photographer living in Salt Lake City with her husband and 9-year-old daughter. She loves capturing moments and surprises that hide in the spaces between. |
 Nancy Takacs is a former wilderness studies and creative writing professor at USU Eastern in Price who now writes full time. Her poetry has received awards including the 2013 Sherwin W. Howard Award from ”Weber,” six first-place awards from the Utah Arts Council writing competition, and “The Nation” Discovery Award. She lives in Wellington. |
 Dale Thompson has a BA in Liberal Arts from Evergreen State College and a master’s in communications from Westminster College. Her writing career includes work for a local theater, journalism in Park City, and freelance contributions for various nonprofit organizations. |
 Geoff Wichert has degrees in critical writing and creative nonfiction. He writes about art to settle the arguments going on in his head. |
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