Summarizing the evening’s discussion, Mr. Markus framed the issue with a question, “Where is the intersection between what people need with housing versus what they are okay with having?”

The City’s currently shuttered Harley Clarke Mansion would become “all things bookish” under a plan that best-selling author Audrey Niffenegger shared recently with members of citizens pushing for re-use of the building.

Sharon Gilmore, a retired palliative nurse who is also a practicing artist, said that her seemingly disparate professions each have one overlapping facet: Both require careful “examinations of soul.”