16 March 2017 Good morning. On the poster board is a casual sketch - - PDF document

16 March 2017 Good morning. On the poster board is a casual sketch of what our new building might look like. What I want to point

• ut is that the orange block at the bottom middle is 600 sf larger than the main library building now.

Everything else is expansion. And—if you are a faithful reader of The County Press, you will have read most of what I’m going to say this morning. Preface: I was one of those kids from Bishop Kelley who descended (literally) on the children’s room at the Lapeer City Library after school and on Saturday. I don’t recall loving the library staff but I did love the books and read voraciously. The library seemed huge to a kid. When I returned to Lapeer in late 2009 to interview for the position of assistant director for public service, I walked into the building and the first thing I noticed was that the staff had no offices. All of their work needed to be done at the public service desks, surrounded by the noise of patrons and equipment, subject to interruption at any time. We all love the building as a symbol of a classic institution, as the physical manifestation of Andrew Carnegie’s desire to make public libraries essential to a community. We do not love the limits that it places on what the staff can do, and for how many people. The planning for a new library actually began with a financial planning study completed by Bob Raz of Hartzell-Mika Consulting and reported to the library board in December 2011. He recommended that the board include consideration of a new library building in its next strategic plan and so the 2014-2016 plan included “plan for library spaces in the district by 2016, by developing a space needs assessment/building program”. By September of 2014, the board had hired Mr. Raz again, this time to conduct a facility study, which provided detailed information on why his more casual recommendation in 2011 was indeed justified by his detailed study of the library facilities in the Lapeer District Library. The state’s library standard for minimum space per person in a library’s legal service area is .6 sf; Lapeer District Library’s is .26 sf. Our central library (deAngeli) is 75% smaller than libraries serving a similar population. Community members were invited to attend Mr. Raz’ presentation of the facility study to the library board in April 2015. In addition to demonstrating that the building size is inappropriate to the population, he studied collection size, space for seating, programming space, meeting rooms, and

• parking. His report drove the board to start actively pursuing a new building, but a great deal of work

needed to be done ahead of time; the board is still doing that work. In the spring of 2015, members of the library board visited several other libraries to see what a modern library looked like. It was important that the library chosen for a visit be about the size of the building we would consider building. Yes, they had been in Southfield Public Library for meetings the year before, but that library is 124,000 sf, and not comparable to what we could (or would want to) do in

• Lapeer. In the late summer of 2015, the library board visited 10 sites in Lapeer and rated them based on

location, cost, patron accessibility, and traffic. A commercial realtor gave the board some of the

recommendations, and the city and schools provided the rest. When the rankings of the sites were tallied, the old Irwin School and the lot at Demille and Davison came out on top. It was later, after I had visited the elegant Charlevoix Public Library located in an old school and the board had received documents from someone who had been interested in repurposing White several years before, that the

• E. T. White School returned to the list.

In late 2015, five Michigan architectural firms received RFQs for our project. Three were sent RFPs and interviewed with the library board on December 12, 2015. In January 2016, c2ae from Lansing and Grand Rapids was selected as architect. Dennis Jensen, who has designed many libraries in Michigan, is

• ur architect. He is the perfect fit for us.

In the case of the two school buildings, each was examined by a structural engineer and toured by the

• architect. The architect studied what could be done with the two buildings to make them into a library,

and created many sketches of adding space, demolishing what needed to be gone, and making as much

• pen space (necessary for a library) as possible. Commercial appraisals were done to estimate market

value of the properties. A phone survey conducted by a professional research firm resulted in a very positive reaction to building a new structure on the vacant land. In the end, because the cost of renovating Irwin was almost as much as the cost of building new, the library board decided to purchase the land at the corner of Demille and Davison from the city. Because five Oakdale buildings were located

• n the 8.5 acres, the library contracted for environmental surveys that have assured us and the architect

that there will be no surprises when the digging starts. This property was selected because of its proximity to the schools, its visibility on a prominent corner, and its size which will allow growth if needed in the future. It was purchased now to show the library board’s commitment to this project and to give the library board and staff the security of knowing that the land will still be available when the time to build the new main branch arrives. At the present time, the architect is sketching different versions of a 35,000 sf main floor with a 15,000 sf lower level. The adult services section in orange is about 600 sf larger than our total space at deAngeli (8100 sf). In addition to making staff work spaces more efficient with sufficient elbow room, the new building will create space for our residents and visitors and will allow the staff to provide services that are not able to be provided now. Creative spaces, a business incubator for entrepreneurs, a local history and genealogy collection for researchers, space to display the artifacts and documents of our own Marguerite deAngeli, and meeting and study rooms to accommodate many uses and users. An outdoor reading space. And parking. The location of this building near so many schools—elementary to community college—opens up

• pportunities for those students, and for the library staff who will be challenged to work with these

students on educational and recreational projects. We dream of space to conduct classes outside, of music and video created by our talented young adults, of distance learning in our meeting room, of providing space for the Family Literacy Center to conduct classes that prepare children for kindergarten and in providing the space for tutoring those students who need more, and in giving entrepreneurs some space, equipment and instructional support that will help them to reach their goals. What can a vibrant public library do for a community? You can look at what the library staff does now in

• ur locations in making connections to residents through readers’ advisory, programming, computer

assistance, materials selection, and just plain kindness. Staff connects people to the larger world

through loans from libraries throughout Michigan, through searches in our online resources for articles that we do not have in print, or for help in fixing one’s car. It is amazing what is available if you know how to find it. Inaccurate information is falling all over itself to be noticed; a trained library professional can help one to find the right information every time. I would urge you, if you do not have a library card, to get one if just for the information available online that is accessible only with a library card— Reference USA, OverDrive and Hoopla. You may not know what you’re missing. In the future, our residents will find that they have a space to hold meetings and connect to their

• neighbors. Those without a computer will find more equipment and will be able to work without

bumping into the person on the computer next to them. Students and business people in need of a quiet space to work will find study rooms for individual and group work. Children and their adults will find a story time room just for them, where literacy will be encouraged and modeled. Economics 101 in my freshman year at university taught me that good schools are an asset to a

• community. We know that people look at the amenities when they’re deciding which community

appeals to them as a place to live. Lapeer has an active community center, good schools, parks and trails, churches, super restaurants downtown and on the periphery, and a charming old library that just doesn’t work any more. With a new library right in the center of the city’s educational corridor, one more fabulous community asset will be added to the city and to the county as a whole. How are we going to find $12.5M? We have worked with a financial advisor at Public Financial Management who has projected that the cost of repaying bonds equivalent to that amount will cost the average homeowner around $25 per year. A couple of coffees per month. Reasonable? I think so. In addition to the bonds, the library board has contracted with a small fund-raising firm that has just started that process with the board. Pre-feasibility meetings were held last week and they will lead us to greater knowledge of the support that exists for this project. They will work on helping the board to decide on a goal for a fund-raising campaign, and on getting a fund-raising group together. A committee that gets out the vote for the new library will need to be formed at the end of this year for the election in August 2018. Library staff will produce informational material for the public, as we did for our operating millage in 2012. I have heard the library called a dinosaur. It is not. Our libraries are the cornerstones of our democracy. Other professions and services change and so do libraries. People will continue to read, they will continue to communicate, they will continue to enjoy the community that they find at their public

• library. For our residents, we will continue to provide the space for them to learn about their history, to

dream about who they want to be and what they want to accomplish, to provide in print, audio and film the evidence that footsteps deserve to be followed and paths need to be forged. Thanks so much for listening.