Expansion of the Canfield Library starts next year

Expansion of the Canfield Library starts next year

CANFIELD

With the Tri-Lakes library having opened this summer to serve northwestern Mahoning County, the county’s next major new public library construction project will be a nearly four-fold expansion of the Canfield Library.

“We hope to break ground by late summer or early fall of next year,” and open the new Canfield library a year later, said Heidi Daniel, director of the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County.

Daniel spoke to the Youngstown-Warren Regional Chamber’s Good Morning Canfield breakfast audience this morning at A La Cart Catering.

Last month, library trustees chose Architect Ronald Cornell Faniro of Youngstown to design the new Canfield branch, which will be built on the site of the existing library at 43 W. Main St.

Faniro designed the library’s Newport Branch in Youngstown and the Tri-Lakes Branch in North Jackson.

If the existing building is retained, tentative plans call for spending about $100 per square foot to renovate the 5,104-square-foot, 1969-vintage existing Canfield branch and $250 per square foot to add 13,663 square feet to it. Doing that would make it an approximately $3.9 million project.

However, Daniel said the library system hasn’t decided whether to retain or demolish and replace the existing building.

The library system has acquired land adjacent to the existing branch in advance of the expansion, during which the branch will be closed.

The expanded branch will have meeting space, which the current branch lacks.