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Canfield library growing nearly fourfold
CANFIELD
With the Tri-Lakes library having opened this summer to serve northwestern Mahoning County, the county’s next major new library construction project will be a nearly fourfold expansion of the Canfield Library.
“We hope to break ground by late summer or early fall of next year,” and open the new 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 Friday 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 current 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 current building is retained, tentative plans call for spending about $100 per square foot to renovate the 5,104-square-foot, 1969-vintage 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.
Daniel said, however, the library system hasn’t decided whether to retain or demolish and replace the current structure.
The library system has acquired land adjacent to the branch in advance of the expansion. The expanded branch will have meeting space, which the current branch lacks.
Library-system plans call for raising $500,000 in philanthropic support for the Canfield effort.
“We’ll have to develop more parking,” Daniel said. “We’ll develop green space around the library. We’re very interested in connecting the library to the community green, since we’re so close,” referring to the Village Green.
The library system also is introducing a new mobile concept in library service, known as the “Pop-Up Library” — a portable library that will appear in various county locations over the next few months to enable patrons to check out and return books or sign up for library cards.
A “Pop-Up Library” will be set up from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Nov. 19 at 20 Federal Place (the former Phar-Mor building) in downtown Youngstown.
“Several members of the community had mentioned that they wanted to see more mobile libraries, so this gave us a quick, easy way to start getting stuff out into the community,” Daniel said, adding that “Pop Up Libraries” are part of a national trend in recent years.
Canfield Fire Chief Don Hutchison announced that a new fire station, funded by a 0.9-mill fire equipment levy that passed in 2006, will be built on Herbert Road next to Canfield Township Park.
The new station would give the fire department a faster response time to better serve the increased population and call volume in the northwestern part of Canfield, he said.
The current fire stations are at city hall and on Messerly Road.
Hutchison said no architect has been hired to design the department’s third station, and he does not know the cost of the new station, for which ground likely would be broken in 2015, at the earliest. It likely would take a year to build the new station, he said.
Hutchison said it would be similar to the Messerly Road facility, and it likely would house two fire engines, or an engine and a water tanker.
He also said Canfield residents can expect up to a 20 percent drop in their homeowners’ insurance rates because the community’s Insurance Services Organization ratings have improved this year.
This is due to the department’s acquisition of an additional water-hauling tanker truck and the installation of dry hydrants that draw water from adjacent ponds in areas that don’t have hydrants fed from public water-supply lines, he explained.