NARRAGANSETT — Gilbane Development Co. agreed yesterday to free up 12 parking spaces near the town library for public use, but the company insisted that a larger area it has reserved for the new Trio restaurant must remain as it is.

In their second face-face-to-face meeting in four days, Town Council members and Gilbane representatives agreed to move forward with what they called a temporary library parking solution, and they also discussed the possibility — suggested by Gilbane — that the town could add more library parking on its own property.

“We’d be willing to make a donation of $5,000” toward a new lot, Robert Gilbane, the company’s chairman and CEO, told council members across a conference table at Town Hall.

The council, in turn, agreed to delay enforcement of an order that Gilbane remove signs that reserve more than 60 parking spaces for Trio, as well as signs that reserve spaces for Belmont Market, Pier Liquors and the Oceanside Condominiums. While the signs are on Gilbane land, they are not on an approved site plan and are therefore illegal, Town Solicitor Mark A. McSally has advised the council.

The 12 spaces that will be made public face the Maury Loontjens Memorial Library and are separated from the town-owned library parking lot by a thin strip of grass. Library patrons have long used those spaces, since the library lot itself has only 17 regular spaces and three handicapped spaces — all of them shared with a public restroom.

Council members pushed for more, but each time they did the Gilbane Development Co. pushed back. Councilman Christopher Wilkens, who spearheaded the effort to do something about the Trio signs, urged the company to remove all the signs that limit parking to individual businesses.

“Make it free and open parking everywhere,” he said.

Gilbane and Robert Gagliari, the company’s director of property management, responded that Trio, which opened in May, is guaranteed spaces in its lease and needs them as it builds a customer base.

“We have spoken to the folks at Trio,” Gilbane said. “He really needs the spaces to make this thing work.”

The Trio-only signs, erected in May, angered library patrons, who responded with a petition calling for the town to limit on-street parking in front of the library to two hours. The town has since determined that there was already a two-hour limit in place from May 15 to Sept. 15.

The new library lot that the company proposed would be entered from Caswell Street and provide about 12 spaces. Council members seemed agreeable to the idea, though it would eat up a lawn area on the library’s west side.

Council members said they would probably approve the short-term solution for this summer, the time of year when Pier parking spaces can be hard to come by, and asked the company to submit a plan by Wednesday so it can be discussed at the next council meeting, on July 21. Gagliardi said the plan will show a thinned-out number of signs but enough to get the reserved-parking message across to people looking for a spot.

What happens when the summer ends remains to be seen. McSally said the council, if it wants, can approve “a limited number” of signs for a “limited time period,” after which they would have to come down.

Gagliardi said the signs near the 12 spaces facing the library will come down today.

In other business, the two sides again failed to agree on how Gilbane Development Co. should move forward with the second phase of a commercial redevelopment in the Pier Village Marketplace.

Council members want the company to raze and rebuild three smaller commercial buildings, adding second floors with apartments. The company says it is willing to renovate but cannot add second floors because it would force existing commercial tenants out. The company also says there is not enough space to provide parking spaces for apartments.

redgar@projo.com