The city’s Board of Estimates unanimously endorsed a resolution supporting continued efforts toward the rebuilding of the Central Library Monday.

Negotiations between the city and developer Fiore Co. were halted in recent months after the two groups failed to reach an agreement on the price. Recently, many City Council members, the Library Board and Mayor Dave Cieslewicz have voiced their support for the rebuilding of the library at its current West Mifflin Street site.

“I’m particularly concerned with the need to move as quickly as possible,” Library Board President Tripp Widder said. “To me that’s critical, to be able to deliver a new Central Library of the scale that we want.”

Ald. Mark Clear, District 19, said he, Widder, a number of alders, Downtown Coordinating Committee Chairperson Troy Thiel and Fiore Executive Vice President Bill Kunkler met to go over exactly what it was that derailed negotiations. He said it was agreed the negotiations had been largely unproductive.

He added the focus has now become to provide Madison residents with an improved library in a timely fashion rather than get bogged down in attempting to resume negotiations.

“The location of the Central Library is important, but [it is] also secondary to fixing it,” Clear said.

Not all present at the meeting were so thoroughly convinced the end to negotiations was in the best interest of the community.

Thiel said he and his committee had requested city staff look again at the difference in projected prices that caused negotiations to fail and the benefits of economic development through commercial space included in the previous plan.

“It’s a major mistake,” Thiel said. “The Board of Estimates, which are numbers people, didn’t talk about net costs — there was no presentation about the numbers of renovation because they don’t know. These are all just guesstimates.”

He added that by simply lowering the floors from 20 to 16 feet, nearly $500,000 could be saved. These savings would amount to about half of the contested gap in prices that ended negotiations.

Combining this with 300,000 square feet of commercial space, a parking facility with a capacity of 400 and intensified land usage would greatly outweigh any benefits provided by the current proposal, he said.

“This is another example of city leaders’ consistent inconsistencies on how they handle development projects,” Thiel said.

Enthusiasm for the current project has been strong in recent weeks as the Library Board approved the project earlier this month.

Cieslewicz said on his recent trip to Europe, he was able to see the potential use for libraries in Madison.

“I found myself with two extra days in Amsterdam,” Cieslewicz said. “And I did what anyone would do with two extra days in Amsterdam — I went to the library.”

A library, he added, is a good investment for a community, and even though there has been some disappointment in the path of the project and concern over the speed with which it has moved, there is a need for improved facilities at this time and prompt action is needed to make the project a reality.