Pleasant Hill Library

1750 Oak Park Blvd, Pleasant Hill, CA 94523

The Pleasant Hill Library was built in 1961 between Oak Park Boulevard and Santa Barbara Road in Pleasant Hill, on approximately 5 acres. The building houses the Library, one of 26 community libraries within the Contra Costa County Library system, as well as the adult literacy program Initiative Second Chance offices. The Library Administration of Contra Costa County moved from this site to 777 Arnold Drive in Martinez in 2016 in anticipation of a new Pleasant Hill Community Library being constructed. Pleasant Hill residents passed Measure K that year with 66 percent approval, securing city funding for the new facility to be located in the immediate vicinity of the current library.

The collection of the library has 85,000 books, audiobooks, videos, DVDs, and CDs which circulate almost half a million times a year. We provide free internet access in the library, from 38 computers and Wi-Fi. The Pleasant Hill Library for Federal government records is a partial Depository Library.

The Library encourages lifelong learning with programs for all ages, including four weekly stories, family nights and maker events, teen and tweens after school activities, adult music and author talks, tech support, a weekly ESL conversation group, 3 monthly book clubs, and more.

Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors announced this week that the Pleasant Hill Library would close for good on June 3, about two years before its replacement is scheduled to open.

The pending closure has drawn strong opposition from a group of residents of Pleasant Hill who fear it would burden patrons. County officials, however, citing reasons ranging from protection during construction to restricted income, agreed with staff recommendations to close the library this summer and invited developers interested in purchasing the property and building houses on it near the new library to submit proposals.

The new library is part of a larger 15-acre project on Oak Park Boulevard and Monticello Avenue which will also include a new park and some 34 houses. The county plans to move its 5 acres for the new library to the city of Pleasant Hill, and then sell the current library site to the chosen developer at 1750 Oak Park Blvd. Earlier plans called for the houses to be constructed on 5 acres behind the library, and a park and sports fields on the current library site later, but project planners decided that it would be easier to create homes first rather than sports fields.

A temporary library will open at the Pleasant Hill Senior Center until 2022 when the new building is completed; laptops, library staff and about 10,000 items will be available for checkout. The Pleasant Hill Teen Center will host activities including storytime for young children and patrons will be able to order books and other items online and pick them up at the temporary library.

Supervisor Karen Mitchoff, who serves the district where the library is located, said she is supporting the closure of the library based on county staff's recommendations citing reasons for protection, economics and project efficiency for the closure in June.

Consultant Jim Kennedy pointed out that real estate forecasters have told the county that land values could decline over the next few years — meaning that the county may soon have to sell to maximize land sale profits. This also means a developer will probably not be able to purchase the land now, choosing to wait two years for the homes to build, he said. The county depends on money from that property to pay for its share of road improvements on Avenida Monticello, Mitchoff said.

The county must consider developers' plans seeking to create the 34-home community until May 12. It is expected the new library will open in June 2022.

County records are pegging the savings from closing the library at $800,000 to $1 million in June, which officials say will be used to set up the new library's book collections.

Chairwoman Candace Andersen of the Board of Supervisors said she supported the closure to keep the project going. A staff memo says that beginning work on the whole lot at once would "minimize" the duration of damage to the community. But more important, Andersen said, is the safety of middle school students who otherwise would walk by a construction site daily to get to class.