By Elissa Ely Eight hundred people a day used to visit the Belmont Public Library on Concord Avenue when the building existed, and few of them ran into Peter Struzziero, the library director. Even fewer run into him now. You would need to hang a right off Grant Street onto tiny C Street, past Department of Public Works trucks and equipment, into a cavernous but immaculate town garage the size of a warehouse, and through a door that appears out of nowhere. It’s a little like spelunking, except there are windows. The library’s reconstruction project is well underway, hopefully to [READ MORE]
CPC Changes Plan, Endorses Seven Projects
By Elizabeth Harmer Dionne Every summer, members of Belmont’s Community Preservation Committee (CPC) update Belmont’s Community Preservation Act (CPA) Plan. Publication of the plan launches the subsequent fiscal year’s funding cycle, which begins with the submission of preliminary project applications each October. The current version of the CPA plan is posted on the town website. During its initial years, Belmont’s CPC learned a lot about elements of successful projects and how best to evaluate them. We have kept the structure and content of the original plan, but in recent years, we have refined and emphasized important provisions. One example is [READ MORE]
Town Plans Sustainable Library
By Marty Bitner and Clair Colburn The proposed new library, designed by Oudens Ello Architecture, is an all-electric, highly sustainable building, but what are those sustainable features? What is the process of designing a holistically sustainable building? Right-Sizing Buildings contribute to 40% of global energy consumption and 33% of greenhouse gas emissions. Since heating buildings is the largest source of carbon emissions in Belmont, the first goal in sustainability is to make sure that our new library is no larger than it needs to be. Having the right size building means that space is not being unnecessarily heated and cooled [READ MORE]