ALBION —
The project to build a new library in Albion is seeing a lot of green — both in the foam insulation that is being added at the South Main Street construction site and in Swan Library’s fundraising effort.
The new library, located at 134 S. Main St., is looking more and more like the community resource library officials hope it will be well into the 21st century. The building’s exterior walls and windows have been installed and the roof shingles are in place — even after some windy days.
Construction crews installed foam insulation throughout the building last week, and the interior rooms are, although cavernous now, are already filled with natural light.
“I love the light,” Library Board of Trustees President Kevin Doherty, the library’s construction representative, said, “it’s heavy, Victorian.”
According to Doherty, the construction has mostly caught up after the project suffered initial delays due to long-forgotten buried materials under the site. “The weather has been to our advantage,” he said during a tour of the site Wednesday.
The next stage, installing the walls and rough-ins to the building, are quickly approaching, an exciting proposition for library employees.
“They started putting drywall behind the circulation desk,” Library Director Susan Rudnicky said after touring the facility. “It looks great.”
Swan’s collections will move from the Burrows’ Mansion, 4 N. Main St., to the new building in the late spring, and the library will have three to four weeks of downtime according to Doherty. A grand opening, complete with a parade, is being planned to take place on the weekend after Independence Day.
“We’re looking to extend the due dates,” Doherty said, “and telling people to bring their books back to the new building.”
The books still on the shelves could be moved by passing the collection on a long line, the same method that brought the high school’s library to the present building in 1973. Dona Scharping, who represents the Albion School Board on the library’s board of trustees, told school officials Monday that local Girl Scouts and the school’s chapter of the National Honor Society have volunteers to participate in the “book move”.
Scharping also updated the board on the fundraising effort, which hit it’s $990,000 goal at the end of the year thanks to a final push of large donations. The library has received more than $1,333,000 in pledges, with the overflow going towards paying down the principle on a 20-year mortgage taken out last year and not adding extra accouterments to the building.
“We talked about it, but the consensus was ‘no’ ,” Doherty said of adding frills to the facility. “We want a durable, institutional building.”
The donation that pushed the fundraising effort over the milestone came from Maurice Hoag, an Albion native who gave $250,000 to the effort. The new library will carry the Hoag name, but the exact plan has not been set, Rudnicky said.
How the library will honor early donors to the project, including large donations left by Ken Dunckel in 2005 and Katherine Billings in 1993. “They will be recognized,” Doherty said. “We’re very appreciate to the early donors.”
Several donors have paid for naming rights to specific parts of the library, including John Sawyer, who donated $100,000 and will have the building’s entryway named after his family. The only unpurchased name is for the children’s library on the western side of the building.
Doherty said the small donors to the project have come through as well. Only two years into a five-year campaign, more than 70 percent of the money pledged to the project has been donated.
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