Fayetteville Library Board Celebrates Potential Sale

The old Fayetteville City Hospital is adjacent to the south side of the Fayetteville Public Library.
The old Fayetteville City Hospital is adjacent to the south side of the Fayetteville Public Library.

— Plans to build an 80,000-square-foot expansion of the Fayetteville Public Library will move at a cautious and methodical pace, library officials said Wednesday.

AT A GLANCE

Library Expansion

The Fayetteville Public Library plans to nearly double its square footage if it finalizes a deal to buy the City Hospital property from Washington Regional Medical Center. The library would use up to 55 percent of the 4.19 acres, according to a library plan.

•Current library: 88,000 square feet

•Additional area: 80,000 square feet

•Current parking spaces: 207

•Additional parking spaces: 373

Source: Fayetteville Public Library

The library’s board and staff, with celebratory champagne-filled glasses at arm’s length, discussed in good faith Wednesday how to proceed with buying the Fayetteville City Hospital property, directly south of the library. They heard news Washington Regional Medical Center’s board approved a $2 million bid for the property Tuesday.

Officials with both parties Wednesday said the deal is still conditional. Attorneys will have to work out a formal agreement that includes a complicated title transfer that could take beyond 60 days, said Vince Chadick, library attorney.

The board voted to approve staff to move forward with negotiation with medical center officials.

The $2 million deal means larger meeting spaces, an auditorium, a larger children’s area and more parking through a library project. It also means a down payment toward a neurological institute at the hospital above its emergency room, if the sale is finalized.

The library will have enough cash to buy the land from savings and also use money kept by the Fayetteville Public Library Foundation, said Stephen Davis, accounting and human resources manager.

Davis recommends keeping 25 percent of the annual budget, or about $1 million, in reserve at all times. The library has about $2.5 million in operating and long-term savings, according to the most recent balance sheets distributed to the board.

“The foundation has about $4 million that could be used for capital,” he said.

David Johnson, library director, said staff will review all funding sources to ensure no legal restrictions on the expenditure.

He said Jeffrey Scherer, the project’s architect and designer of the library, will begin detailed architectural plans after the year’s end. That’s after the library schedules public sessions seeking opinions on what people expect from designs, Johnson said.

Scherer and other planners have submitted preliminary design’s in the library’s 2030 Master Plan.

Libraries in the four large cities in Northwest Arkansas don’t have branches. Fort Smith has two branches. The Central Arkansas Library System, which includes Little Rock, has 15 branches, according to its website.

Fayetteville’s library opened in 2004. Voters approved a temporary sales tax that collected $19.3 million between 2000 and 2002 to help pay for the $23 million construction project. A fundraising campaign also raised $8.1 million to help pay for the cost.

Library staff have begun contacting donors and will begin a capital campaign for the expansion, Johnson said after the meeting.

The library will also wait until after a Nov. 12 bond issue before discussing any proposal for sales tax or property tax increase, he said. Voters will decide the fate of a $11.9 million bond issue committing hotel, motel and restaurant taxes to Walton Arts Center improvement and a regional park in southwest Fayetteville.

Library officials agreed Wednesday to the medical center’s request for a dedication to the Stone Family. S.K. Stone and Amanda Stone left their property, where the City Hospital was, in the care of the city in a 1909 deed.

The city owned the property for decades but transferred its deed in 2011 to the medical center in exchange for 1.1 acres north of the medical center where a traffic roundabout was built. Washington Regional ran City Hospital as a nursing home in the early 1990s before closing it in September.

A stipulation in the deed requires proceeds from a sale of that property go toward the “establishment and maintenance” of the city’s hospital, which is now the medical center on North Hills Boulevard.

The Stones left behind specific requirements about the use of the property that requires careful consideration when transferring the title of the land to the library, Chadick said.

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