The Wake Forest Library on East Holding Avenue, which has been too small for its thousands of users for years, will be expanded from 5,000 to 8,000 square feet, making it a community library with additional hours of operation and staffing. The timeline for the expansion now is between January of 2017, when planning will begin, and spring of 2018 – maybe April, May or June – when it could reopen.
That was the message from Wake County Library System Director Michael Wasilik last week when he spoke to the Friends of Wake Forest Library’s annual meeting.
With the larger size, Wasilik said the Wake Forest Library would be open four hours more than it is now and would have eight full-time employees, two of them children’s librarians. There would also be more books and more programs. There will not be any additional adult programs because those are planned only for the regional libraries where there is more space and chairs. Children do not mind sitting on carpet to listen to stories, he said, but it is doubtful adults would enjoy that.
When asked if the library would be closed during the expansion, Wasilik said, “Probably not. We would look into a temporary facility during construction but we’re also looking into other options. The least favorite option being that we would have to close. We’ll try to work with the town to find a temporary location.”
Another option could be to do the expansion while the library remains open in its present state and close briefly to consolidate the two parts.
There are other construction projects the library system will undertake before the work begins in Wake Forest. First, of course, is the new regional library in Wakefield going up on Forest Pines Drive, which is due to open about March of 2016. A Middle Creek library is next, Wasilik said, and staff is working with the towns of Cary and Fuquay-Varina to identify building sites. Rolesville is asking for a library as is the Brier Creek area.
He said the library system is recovering from the recession when it lost a lot of funding as the county government tightened its belt. All the new libraries and expansions mean more money will have to be spent on libraries. Wasilik said the annual operating budget for a 5,000-square-foot library like Wake Forest is $350,000; “To run an 8,000-square-foot library it costs $600,000. Libraries are very expensive to run.”
Because the book budget was cut in half during the recession, “We lost a lot of customers” because they could not walk into a library and find a new book they wanted on the shelves. Wasilik said there is a need for 600,000 books, but he does not want to buy them all at once even if he could afford to do so. That number of books time $15 each (average) is $9 million, but library books on average last seven years, so he wants to spread out the purchases over the years. “The new Northeast Regional will help close the gap with 150,000 books. We are still notable to buy the replacements (books) we’d like because of the increase of population in the county, but we are doing better.”
During the meeting the group elected new officers: Jennifer Davis will be the president, John Rich will be vice president, current board member Lisa Ruhl will be the secretary and Marianne Sholtz will be a new director.
