A site selection committee will begin advertising next week for suggestions from Sherwood residents for a suitable location to move the city's Amy Sanders Public Library, now hemmed in at its 31 Shelby Road address.
The committee held its initial meeting Monday at the library to organize its process for selecting a site it will later recommend to the Sherwood City Council and establish a tentative budget for the project.
The new library location is required to be within Sherwood's city limits, have 4 to 6 acres and be available within a price range that fits the $5.8 million budgeted to buy land, build and furnish the library, which is part of the Central Arkansas Library System.
"What combination of pieces are there that make a library function well?" CALS Director Bobby Roberts, who managed Monday's organizational meeting, asked the group rhetorically. "Access to schools for instance. Is the site visible? How quick can you get to it in an automobile?
"We know that when we build a new library, use goes up," Roberts said. "If we build it in the right place, its use is going to go up and stay up."
Advertisements and a notice on the city's website are to be published by next week. The committee set a June 19 deadline to receive suggestions. Suggestions are to be sent to the Sanders Library.
The committee will meet again June 30 to begin its initial evaluation. Field trips to the six or seven most suitable locations are also likely before narrowing the final list. Taggart Architects Inc. of North Little Rock will "technically assess" sites to determine their suitability.
"Ease of site development is crucial," Roberts said. "There may be one site, maybe three sites to recommend to the city. Every piece of land is different."
Sherwood Mayor Virginia Hillman Young said after the meeting that she and Roberts have looked throughout the city "to start getting a general sense" of possible locations. The center of Sherwood's population, and growth, is just north of the current library, she said.
Young asked the committee to make its own evaluations from the suggestions to be received and to decide on the final choice or choices to recommend to the City Council.
"I really hope it doesn't become political and the people of Sherwood really choose somewhere that's best for the city," Young said.
Committee members are: Alderman Ken Keplinger; CALS representative Lupe Pena-Madison, who will be committee chairman; Sherwood Planning Commission Chairman Lucien Gillham; and Martha Van Pelt, Dr. Kelli Sanders, William Paul Cummings and Bonnie Bratcher.
Sherwood voters approved a 1.3-mill property tax in the November general election with 53.2 percent of the vote to fund $6 million in bonds for the project. A mill is one-tenth of a cent. The tax will end when the millage revenue pays off the debt.
The bonds haven't been issued, but about $5.8 million is expected to be available after the cost of the issuance is subtracted from the total, Roberts said.
Plans are for the new library -- already named the Amy Sanders Library and Family Center, after a former city clerk -- to be 14,500 square feet. The Sanders Library is the smallest CALS branch in Pulaski County at 8,500 square feet and the oldest branch in the system, having opened in 1989.
Metro on 05/19/2015