FAYETTEVILLE -- The Fayetteville Public Library has plenty of work to do toward its expansion, even though officials must wait on the state Supreme Court to decide whether the new space will be built to the south of the existing building or on top of it.
Fayetteville voters Tuesday passed a 2.7-mill increase in property taxes to fund $26.5 million of the library's $49 million proposed expansion.
Consultants want to hear from the public as they determine the finer details of the expansion and renovation. The tax proceeds must be collected and distributed and bonds must be issued. Also, an estimated $23 million in private donations needs to be raised.
Before anything concrete can happen, the Arkansas Supreme Court has to decide whether it will clear the $2 million sale of the old City Hospital land from Washington Regional Medical Center to the library.
Heirs of the Stone family, who donated the land to the city a century ago with the intent that it be used for a hospital, have fought the sale to the library. Lower courts have ruled in the library's favor.
If the state's Supreme Court rules in the library's favor, the library could expand 88,000 square feet onto the adjacent land to the south. If the sale is rejected, floors will be added to the existing building.
"We don't feel that that will be an issue in the long run, and that the Supreme Court will agree with the lower courts," said Paul Becker, Fayetteville chief financial officer.
Fayetteville Public Library Executive Director David Johnson said it's too early to know when a decision will have to be made on expansion.
"We don't want to jump ahead, sell the bonds and then not really be ready to actually move forward," he said. "We're going to have to do some planning and timeline projecting."
Stacey Pectol, state Supreme Court clerk, said it's reasonable to expect justices to take up the case by the end of this year or early next year. But how long they will spend on it is unknown.
A civil-litigation case like the library's takes lowest priority on the Supreme Court's docket. Criminal and juvenile matters take precedence, Pectol said.
But library administration officials are in no hurry to start spending money, Johnson said. The voters trusted the library to be frugal and make decisions wisely, he added.
"One way or the other, we just really would like for them to hurry up so that we know what we're dealing with," he said. "But there's a lot of work that can be taking place before we get to that actual decision date."
The library's first major undertaking is gathering information. Anders Dahlgren with Library Planning Associates will head the effort.
Dahlgren worked with Meyer, Scherer and Rockcastle, the library's original architectural firm, to gather information on the library's usage for a series of public-input sessions held in July.
Now, the information will get much more specific, Dahlgren said. The latest round of analysis will spell out exactly how many shelves the library will need once it expands, how tall and wide they will be and the capacity for materials, he said.
"I think we need to go back and re-examine some of the fundamental planning assumptions that we made because we last revisited those about a year ago," he said. "As I like to say, those pesky tectonic plates of library service keep shifting."
This step will be known as the programming phase. Another round of public input will be needed to figure out what to do with the library's existing spaces. The children's library, for example, will move to the expanded space. The question then becomes what to put there, Johnson said.
The library's initial time frame had those public input sessions starting in September, but they'll most likely be pushed back to late this year, lead architect Jack Poling said.
"The public-input process takes different shapes in different communities," he said. "The whole idea with that is to gather input and ideas from the community. We know a lot about libraries, but the community knows about what they want for their library."
The date to move into the expanded space by 2021 and renovate its existing space still stands, Poling said, but a lot of discussion still needs to happen before then.
The money from the 1.5-mill permanent tax increase for maintenance and operations won't be collected until next year, Becker said. The levy has to be filed with the county by Oct. 31, and a partial distribution of the funds won't be available until the spring.
The earliest the library could start selling bonds for construction would be March -- assuming the City Hospital decision is in and the designs are complete, Becker said.
There's also the issue of raising $23 million or so in private donations.
Bill Mitchell, former chief executive officer of the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville, will serve as a consultant in the fundraising efforts. He helped coordinate funding for the library's 2004 opening.
It's not about bake sales and events; it's about establishing connections from the people you know will contribute, Mitchell said.
The library has a fundraising arm, the Roberta Fulbright Society, and members donate annually. The library will start with those people and branch out to their friends and associates, he said.
Smaller fundraising efforts, like events, will happen after the library has collected the bulk of the larger private donations. The library will be in charge of those efforts, and Mitchell won't be involved, he said.
"It's kind of like a jigsaw puzzle in those front-end pieces," Mitchell said. "As you work your way to the need being less and less because you have accomplished some of it, you can begin to talk to lots more people, so it gets a lot louder, it gets a lot more public at that point."
Metro on 08/15/2016