Famed library architect: Keep cop shop off the block

After weeks of silence, perhaps the paramount voice in the Library Square debate is declaring his disgust.

Award-winning architect Moshe Safdie, who designed Salt Lake City's showcase Main Library, has "great concern" with Mayor Ralph Becker's proposal for a cop shop on the downtown cultural block, calling the resulting arrangement a "fundamental transformation for the worse."

Safdie -- along with fellow library architects Steve Crane and Mark Johnson -- suggested that a "museum or performing-arts building" might work on Library Square, but warned that "a police station and emergency operations center is hardly a complementary use to the public life of the park."

"With further study," the architects wrote in a letter to Becker, the City Council and the Library Board, "locating the police station on a block adjacent to the library block might be an acceptable addition."

The Library Board voted Tuesday to oppose placing a police headquarters a book's throw from the capital's cultural icon. The board argues the cop complex -- to be funded by a $125 million bond if voters approve it in November -- is "incompatible" and poses a philosophical threat to the freedom-of-speech nature of Library Square.

"It's not just an architectural issue," board member John Becker said Wednesday. "It's the compatibility of what that block is all about, and that's intellectual freedom."  Original Article