COMMUNITY: Proposals for Expanding the Library’s Winn Room

The Winn

Exploring possibilities for expanding the Library’s Winn Room

By Kelly Purvis | Photos Courtesy of the Coronado Public Library

The proposed project to update the Winn Room will open up to the adjacent park space with an outdoor deck and enhanced landscaping.

The Winn Room at the Coronado Public Library is at the literal and figurative heart of the community. There are few residents who have never crossed its threshold at some point to see a presentation or attend a meeting. At a recent community meeting, Library Board Trustee Brenda Jo Robyn stated that the Library Trustees approved the concept of updating the Winn Room back in 2018. Fast forward to 2021 and conceptual plans to renovate and expand the beloved venue are generating widespread interest and were presented at a Community Meeting in March.

Built in the early 1970s, the existing Winn Room has structural issues such as bad sight lines for the stage and screen due to a low ceiling, poor acoustics and a seating capacity that the community has outgrown. These limitations adversely affect efforts to attract the type of high caliber library speakers and concerts that Coronado would like to offer its residents. For instance, publishing companies are reluctant to send best-selling authors to a venue that is unable to seat many more than 100 people.

Homegrown festivals, like the Coronado Island Film Festival, would like to use a less limited Winn Room; existing library programs, such as the annual summer concerts, have been so oversubscribed that the library has limited attendance by ticketing. In the last couple years, some concerts have been crammed into the library lobby at the request of performers because of better acoustics — a setup that is time consuming, can only take place after regular library hours and doesn’t significantly boost capacity.

The availability of quality, free arts and culture is widely considered to be as important to the livability of a city as top-notch recreational facilities. No other venue in the city performs the same role as the Winn Room, which is a truly unique community space and the only auditorium that offers free use. Before the pandemic, venues like the Nautilus Room — the only other city venue in the same size range as the proposed expansion — were fully booked months in advance for paying groups, including private events like weddings and city recreation programming, which is affordable, but not free. These revenue-generating uses have limited the availability for free community events. In keeping with the wishes of the community to control the size of the Spreckels Center, the Spreckels Grand Room is no larger than the current Winn Room and only seats 96 people. It is also frequently in use for city recreation programming for the 50+ demographics and private events. While both these rooms are useful for functions, neither is up to the envisioned standard of the Winn Room as a performance space. The only other larger city performance venue is the Main Stage Theater at Coronado High School, which has similarly limited availability for use by community groups due to school hours, CoSA and school district events along with rental, custodial and staffing costs.

Always the cornerstone of the library’s cultural enrichment offerings, the Winn Room has only become more central as the library’s role has evolved from a mere book repository to a center where the community can connect through programs and events. For everything from Boy Scouts to the Coronado Roundtable, a number of nonprofits and community groups that are integral to the quality of life in Coronado depend on the Winn Room

for a venue to hatch ideas and make plans. Thus, events in the room are often multipliers, engendering other events that will take place in other locations throughout the city.

Recognizing a need to renovate the Winn Room to provide a venue that would better serve the community's needs, the City Council in January 2020 approved a feasibility study and community consultation to determine the scope of improvements. The feasibility study was undertaken by M. W. Steele Group, the architects for the library’s 2005 expansion, and guided by a stakeholder group including the Coronado Historical Association, Coronado Island Film Festival, Coronado School of the Arts, the high school PTO, the Cultural Arts Commission and library groups such as the Board of Trustees and the Friends of the Library.

The study estimated the design would cost about $6 million — a construction cost of over $1,000 per square foot, which is within the typical range for San Diego, even if it is above the median. The comparison is a little misleading because the cost for performance spaces is never comparable to home building costs because they come with extra expenses entailed in creating an open, long space without intermediate support columns and audio visual and acoustic elements. Any Winn Room expansion, regardless of scope, would have extra costs that are typical of a highly detailed building renovation carried out in a small build area. Extending and raising the roof means the tricky task of some demolition while upgrading and preserving some of the existing building and would cost more than a new build. For instance, the Spreckels Center, which was a new build at a time of deflated construction costs, came in at $6.8 million. Additionally, the scope calls for maintaining consistency with the existing building’s precast concrete and large windows, which are both more expensive than standard framing and basic exterior cladding. However, cost estimates at this stage are deliberately conservative — the project may prove more economical as the designs are refined and the project undergoes competitive bidding.

The stakeholder group requested a design that would: reflect the ambiance of the community and not be so visually extravagant as to overwhelm the existing library; fit organically with the existing library building and respect its historic Spreckels room frontage; preserve and open up to the adjacent park to integrate indoor and outdoor spaces; and to increase square footage and create a state-of-the-art community facility to meet the needs of Coronado for the next 50 to 75 years.

Preservation of and audience engagement with the adjacent park have been one of the goals of the Winn Room project from the outset. Lessons have been learned from the Spreckels Center project in approaching this project sensitively with the aim of minimizing the impact to existing trees and maintaining the character of the North Library Lawn as a green space covered in trees. The library and the City support the urban forest, its ability to soften the urban environment, provide shade in hot weather and aid with carbon sequestration. The North Library Grounds Rehabilitation, a Capital Improvement Project approved in 2017/18, will be an adjunct to this project that will involve a comprehensive review of the area around the library with a view to maintain the balance of trees. Both Winn Room concepts envision building designs that celebrate and blend with the adjacent park space, with large, park-facing windows and a terrace to transition from inside to outside.

Given the Winn Room’s importance for use by local organizations, few would dispute it is outdated and in need of renovation to accommodate Coronado’s needs. The consultation process so far has whittled options down

The proposed updates to the Winn Room would include doubling seating capacity in the room.

“The Winn” is a proposed project to update the Winn Room will be considered by the Coronado City Council. This schematic is Option B and imagines the space opening up and activating usage of the park space to the North of the current room.

to a choice between two renovation options, both of which are estimated to cost roughly $6 million: a modest expansion and a more iconic design that more fully meets the desired criteria and aims to fit Coronado’s character.

The simplest plan entails an elevated rectangular extension running perpendicular into the park while the slightly more complex plan staggers back from Orange Avenue with uneven walls that improve acoustics. The screen and stage in the first plan would be adjacent to the park, while in the second plan these elements are incorporated at the back of the auditorium, leaving the view of the park unobscured.

Both plans would increase the room’s capacity to comfortably seat over 200 people and provide a multipurpose space. They each include an additional exterior stage linking the interior space and the park, as well as a foyer. Most events that fill the room beyond its current capacity are resident-attended community events. Increasing the room size to the 200-240 person range will fill a hole in the portfolio of community performance spaces in Coronado. The intention of the Winn Room renovation is to replace aging and insufficient infrastructure and to be a source of pride for the community and to continue to offer a free venue that allows the community to gather.

For more information, visit the library and view the architectural storyboard or visit the Comment Coronado website (commentcoronado.org) and choose “The Winn” under the Active Projects drop down menu. Watch the Virtual Town Hall Meeting that was held in late March and take the survey. Your participation in this informal survey is valued and will help inform discussion of the concept plans.

• Kelly Purvis lives in Coronado and serves as the Senior Management Analyst in the City Manager’s Office, focusing on Arts and Culture and supporting the Coronado Cultural Arts Commission.

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