Foxborough library expansion plans stir dispute. (Boston Globe, 6/2/2011)
Excerpt: An ultramodern design for an expansion of Foxborough’s 1960s-era Boyden Library at Bird and Baker streets has caused a firestorm of controversy in the historic neighborhood, where residents have hired a lawyer to try to stop it.
According to Foxborough attorney Mark Stopa, who says he represents a group of a dozen or more residents, the $12 million renovation and expansion project is based on a design residents had never seen until recently. He said they also didn’t receive legal notice of a key meeting last August where the plan was granted zoning variances.
“Everyone agrees we should have a library that meets the town’s needs,’’ Stopa said. “We want a beautiful library we can all be proud of, not one that violates who we are as a town. And we ought to have a say in how it should look.’’
Town Meeting voters approved funding in May 2010 to upgrade and expand the large concrete library next to the town common. But controversy developed recently, particularly among those who live within sight of the library, when the voters learned that the design they thought they had approved — with a graceful, curved glass wall connecting the existing building with the new one — had been replaced with one dominated by an angular exterior overhang and dramatic glass stairway.
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