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Not your grandma’s library

By Pat Stuart
Posted 3/29/22

It’s been a while since I filled everyone in on where the town is vis-à-vis its new library. In the meantime, we’ve explored multiple options, talked out alternatives, and …

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Around the County

Not your grandma’s library

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It’s been a while since I filled everyone in on where the town is vis-à-vis its new library. In the meantime, we’ve explored multiple options, talked out alternatives, and generally spread enough ideas around to confuse everyone.

So, I’m hoping to share with you a bit of clarity.

Here’s one certainty: The library your library board has on the drawing board will not resemble the one your grandma knew as a child. Nor will it look like the same library we have now.

It’s not going to be a Band-Aid or just another remodel plus just another addition. Powell has had that time and again over the past hundred years. The results? I invite you to visit when the middle school lets out to judge the library’s adequacy for yourself. Or try at any time to find a comfortable place to sit and work or just read.

The professional needs assessment we did several years ago said, “totally inadequate.” We — the library board and library friends — took that to heart.

A great town deserves and needs a great library. Or at least a very good and very functional one to take us through the next 20 or so years and serve a growing and prospering town, helping (the way libraries do in thriving towns across the country) to augment that prosperity.

In short, we thought we wanted a brand new built-from-scratch library. 

But where to put it? Many, myself included, thought Veteran’s Park an ideal (and cheap) location. What many didn’t know is that Veteran’s Park is on land granted to the City of Powell by the federal government with a lot of strings attached. The same is true of the land under the current library. A swap? Well … not to get into the complexities, but it turned out that accomplishing a transfer might happen in the next decade. 

And why jump through all those hoops, anyway? The current building is presently sitting on one of the best pieces of land in town and perfectly situated to provide an ideal afterschool gathering place for middle schoolers.

Some said, “Sure, OK, but then tear down the existing building, which is seriously flawed, and start over.”

Seriously flawed? Turns out, not so much. In fact, a full engineering study said the building is in good condition for its age and, definitely, has good bones.

That information brought us via many circuitous roads and much research and debate to THE PLAN. The plan calls for a gut of the current building’s 9,000 square foot main floor, a two-story 9,000 square foot addition on the northeast end of the parking lot — the common wall between old and new opened up as much as possible. The plan asks for a large meeting room to hold 80-plus people (which will be accessible from outside for after-hours events), for small meeting rooms in the adult area, for a teen room with study area and for a large children’s library with its own story time/craft room.

We’ve asked for a warm inviting building with new facades on the east and south to welcome you in. We’re envisioning a large entry opening to a space featuring the Powell Library Club fireplace (converted to gas) with comfortable seating. Beyond you will see the circulation desk, stacks and places to sit and work on your own computer or on ours or, simply, to curl up with a good book. Wide staircases and a new elevator will take you up to a story-influenced children’s area or down to the Friends’ book store.

This is what our architects, GSG Architecture, is designing for us.

How to pay for it all? The library board has asked both the mayor and the county commissioners to include at least a significant portion of the cost as a one penny cap tax on the November 2022 ballot.

Many of you will remember that this is how we paid for the Cody library. It seems fitting that we should use the same method once more.

In the next few weeks, we should be receiving the preliminary floorplans. Stay tuned for more information on this great Powell infrastructure project.

 

(Pat Stuart is the chair of the Park County Library Board.)

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