Officials at the Greater Little Rock Council of Garden Clubs have been in negotiations with the Central Arkansas Library System about a proposal to donate the organization’s striking building on Kavanaugh Boulevard to the library.
Library system Executive Director Bobby Roberts confirmed that he has had several discussions about taking the building, known as Hillcrest Hall, into the library’s inventory. Roberts was traveling Wednesday but said by phone that the talks are still preliminary and no agreements have been signed.
“The organization’s members would have to vote on the donation before any of that would happen,” he said. “We’re in a very preliminary stage, and we’ve made it clear that it’s not a property that we would acquire. It would have to be donated to us.”
Messages requesting comment left at the council’s Hillcrest Hall office were not returned Wednesday. Phone calls to individual members who have been involved in the negotiations were also not returned.
Roberts said the property, which sits at the intersection of Lee Avenue and Kavanaugh Boulevard, is too close to other library branches for the library to make a financial case to buy it. The triangle-shaped property includes a two-story brick building with a stage, offices, meeting rooms and event space; a large parking lot; and a garden landscaped by member clubs that has a brick walkway and gazebo.
Residents driving past the intersection are used to seeing wedding parties, events with horse-drawn carriages and other celebrations at the space.
Roberts said that if the donation does happen, the building would remain available for meetings and events. Still to be decided at this stage of the discussion were whether fees would be collected for those bookings and what that money would be spent on.
Roberts said, however, the system would not use the building for a traditional library branch.
“It could be used as a programming asset in conjunction with some of the other programs we have at the nearby children’s library,” Roberts said. “It has a stage and the gardens and those functions would obviously still remain.If the donation happens, we would love for the garden clubs to continue maintaining and planting those gardens, and there’s maybe an opportunity there to include children in a horticultural program.”
The programming aspect of the Central Arkansas Library System has been steadily increasing over the past decade but intensified with the addition of the recently dedicated Hillary Rodham Clinton Children’s Library and Learning Center at 4800 W. 10th St.
The 6-acre library site includes a greenhouse, ecological and environmental science programming, interactive outdoor habitats, a kitchen with plans for cooking classes and many other hands-on features.
Elsewhere in the library system, staff members have focused on ways to keep the library system a vibrant resource in the digital age, offering digital magazine access, computer-assisted job hunt help and classes, and programming to draw people into the library’s 16 facilities all over central Arkansas.
If the negotiations and plans came to fruition, Hillcrest Hall would be the first facility the library owned that focused solely on programming.
Roberts said that under the plan, the garden-club council would not have a day-to-day presence at the facility but would be welcome to use the meeting spaces whenever needed and to lead tours of the outdoor gardens as it wished. He said the library would welcome a volunteer partnership to help develop a horticulture program for children, which he said could run on Saturdays during the nearby Hillcrest Farmers’ Market.
Online records of the Pulaski County assessor’s office list the property as being tax-exempt but don’t give a reason for the exemption. Nonprofit organizations are not automatically given property tax exemptions through local municipalities.
The assessor’s office staff said the exemption was given a long time ago. The reason was not immediately available late Wednesday and would have to be researched in older property records, the staff said.
Roberts said he did not want to speak for the council, but said his understanding of the reason for the donation was the increased time, cost and effort needed to maintain the building.
The council funds the building’s maintenance through event bookings. The council also collects membership dues and raises money through its annual spring garden tour, according to the group’s website.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 08/08/2013