A site selection committee expanded its location choices for a new library in Sherwood to three Thursday night, after the Sherwood City Council expressed a desire earlier in the week to consider more options.
The library will replace Amy Sanders Library at 31 Shelby Road, a branch of the Central Arkansas Library System. Opened in 1989, the Sanders Library is the system's oldest library and smallest branch in Pulaski County.
The committee had decided July 30 on a 21-acre site between Maryland Avenue and Woodruff Road, pending City Council approval. Council members asked at their meeting Monday night for additional options.
Keeping the Maryland Avenue site, the committee added property on Johnson Avenue close to Sylvan Hills Middle School, and a property on Arkansas 107 just west of the Millers Crossing subdivision entrance. Both sites were among the original 13 locations the committee had considered, Sherwood Mayor Virginia Hillman Young said Friday.
The site selection committee voted 7-1 July 30 for the Maryland Avenue location after a tour of four finalist sites. The City Council now will decide between the three latest finalists at its next meeting Sept. 28.
"We knew all along that the site selection would be a challenging aspect of it," Young said.
The two sites added are each about 14 acres, and each would cost about $960,000, Central Arkansas Library System Director Bobby Roberts said in an email Friday. The Maryland Avenue site was listed for $496,000, according to committee information at the time of the previous selection.
"All three locations would be fine for the new library," Roberts said.
Property owners close to the Maryland Avenue site have expressed concerns about having the library and its traffic in that area, and owners of other considered sites began offering more acreage, Young said. When the committee advertised in June for possible sites to be submitted for consideration, it asked for sites "4 to 6 acres" in size.
"Property owners for some of the others didn't know a larger tract would be wanted," Young said. "They wanted to have their sites re-evaluated."
Sherwood voters approved a 1.3-mill property tax in November to fund $6 million in bonds for the project. The tax is to end when the millage revenue pays off the debt for the new library.
The delay in choosing a site will make it "pretty tight" to have a bond issuance this year while interest rates remain historically low, Young said.
"It's going to slow it down a little bit," Young said. "We're running a risk.
"But, we're going to have a nice library somewhere. It's going to be nice to have a site that has a lot of room on it, if any of these three are chosen. We will end up having something the community will be pleased with."
Metro on 08/29/2015