WAVERLY, Ohio — The Garnet A. Wilson Public Library of Pike County will break ground Oct. 9 on a new main library building, marking the start of construction after more than a decade of fundraising and planning.
The ceremony is set for 11 a.m. at 550 E. 2nd St. in Waverly, next to the Bristol Village Retirement Center, according to the library. Library staff, the board of trustees, community leaders, supporters and project partners are expected to attend, and the public is invited.
The groundbreaking marks the official start of what the library calls the “Next Chapter” project’s Phase One, which covers construction of the entire building shell and completion of a multipurpose space for community events, educational programs and workforce development, the library said in a post.
Although the ceremony will take place in October, physical groundwork and earth-moving are not expected to begin until spring. The library said its civil engineering work took longer than anticipated, pushing site work to a spring start, but that the October ceremony still marks an important milestone as the project moves from years of planning, design and fundraising into construction.
The new building carries a total project cost of $5.9 million, according to the library’s website. The library has raised nearly $3 million toward that goal through donations, pledges and grants, leaving about $2.9 million still to be secured through continued fundraising, grants and loan opportunities.
Among the grants supporting the project is a $300,000 Infrastructure and Capacity Building Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, awarded as a 3-to-1 matching grant that required the library to raise $900,000 over roughly six years to fully draw down the federal award.
The library has outgrown its current home, a building more than a century old that originally served as a chicken hatchery and livery stable before it was converted for library use. The existing site offers just 12 parking spaces, only one of which is accessible, according to the library.
The Garnet A. Wilson Public Library was founded in 1939 and has operated from its current location at Market Street and Emmitt Avenue since 1985, made possible by a gift from J.B. Wilson, who asked that the library be named in honor of his wife, Garnet A. Wilson. The library system has since grown to include branches serving Beaver, Piketon and western Pike County.
The information contained in this story was obtained from the Garnet A. Wilson Public Library of Pike County.
