Local developer Ben Carter's $24 million offer to buy and demolish the distinctive Buckhead library was rejected Wednesday by the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library system.

Board trustees voted 8-0, with two abstentions, to keep and renovate the 18-year-old library, which has earned international acclaim for its design.

John Spink/AJC (ENLARGE)

A patron enters the walkway at the Buckhead library.

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The vote will be a recommendation to the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, which has the final say.

For library board Chairman John Thomas the issue came down to protecting unique, if controversial, buildings.

"The Buckhead library, for better or for worse, represents a piece of what Atlanta was as the 20th century drew to a close," Thomas said after the vote. "We have a chance to begin a trend of saving similar structures."

Thomas praised Carter's $1.5 billion Streets of Buckhead project, which will turn a former eight-block party zone into a ritzy area to shop, eat, stay and live.

At the same time, he said, buildings that don't fit the mold are worth protecting. "What do we believe? Do we believe it has to be shiny and tall with no character?" Thomas asked. "We have to stop this process."

The library sits in the middle of Carter's project. He proposed relocating the library to a future mixed-use building, where it would be sandwiched between a parking garage and condominiums. Patrons would have to ride an elevator to access the library.

John Eaves, the commission chairman and a library trustee, abstained from voting.

Eaves said he initially thought Carter's proposal was "wonderful." But after press reports about Carter's idea, Eaves said he heard a lot of opposition and retreated from his earlier enthusiasm for the plan.

Trustee Jim Maddox, an Atlanta city councilman, also abstained. Early in the meeting he said, "What's being offered is very, very significant. It sounds to me like a very fair offer."

After his abstention, Maddox told the standing room crowd, "I couldn't feel strongly for it; I couldn't feel strongly against it."

Carter, who was not at the board meeting, has said the library would be "a gap in the experience" when Buckhead Avenue, where the library is located, becomes a high-end shopping area.

The library has been referred to as a "slate dragonfly" because of its unusual exterior and airiness. Designed by Mack Scogin and Merrill Elam, the building sits on a crest and offers a view of downtown.

About a dozen people spoke for preserving the library before the board voted.

"Pretty soon, all our children are going to wear the same clothes from Target," said one audience-member, defending the library's unique look.

John Szabo, the library system director, said Carter had suggested two sites on East Paces Ferry Road where a new standalone library could go.

But buying that land and constructing a new building would eat up most, if not all, of the $24 million Carter offered, Szabo said.

Trustees opposed to putting the library in a mixed-use building said it would be "a captive" under that scenario.

More than 100 library defenders demonstrated outside the building last weekend. An online petition drive to save the library had garnered in excess of 1,500 signatures by Wednesday afternoon.

The Northside Library Association, equivalent to a friends-of-the-library group, started a separate petition drive and gathered another 400 signatures from fans of the building.

"What residents want is a valued piece of art that happens to be a library," trustee Stephanie Moody said before making the motion to reject Carter's offer.