Library furnishings

Rumours have abound about the extravagant furnishings in the library.  Two persistent  items have been:

• The chairs, supposedly $5k for Knoll Womb chairs.  Gee, they could have gotten fakes for only $800.
• The sinks, supposedly $5k for a pair like this one. 

I certainly feel cleaner using a sink like that.  I wonder how much these would have been.   

How much was the library going to cost

According this document, from the state, a 45k sq ft Walnut Creek branch library was needed before 2011 at an estimated cost of $25m.  You can check it out at the link here

We all know that the government lies all the time about costs, but I thought it would be fun to stare here.  Let's put a stake in  the ground at $25m and see where it leads to.

Where did the money go?

This is this first of maybe several entries about the state of my city's  finances.  First of all, the library.  Built for a reported $39m for 42,000 square feet.  I thought it would be interesting to compare to other similar constructions.

In 2000 the state's electorate passed prop 14 which established a $350m bond issue for building/upgrading libraries around the state.  Localities were able to submit grant requests to grab their share.  Walnut Creek's application was rejected, more on that if I can find out why, but in the meantime Look at this:

State's site on this process: http://www.library.ca.gov/grants/lba2000/

it is being administered by the state librarian.  I have yet to find Walnut Creek's application but I did find this interesting bit.  Look at what other libraries cost for similar square footage:

http://www.library.ca.gov/grants/lba2000/docs/CAPubLibBldgConstCosts.xls

Just picking off a couple obvious examples, I see:

•  Alameda main : 48k sq ft for $25m
• Camarillo main: 65k sq ft for $27m
• San Mateo main: 93k sq ft for $55m

I guess the San Mateo figure shows that people will spend a lot but the Alameda numbers are nearby and might be a better comp.

So why did the Walnut Creek library cost $39m?   And why did their application get rejected which lead the city to pay for it?  And where did they get the money. I'm looking.