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Library board mulls offer from Campbell City Schools
By Justin Wier
YOUNGSTOWN
While the board of trustees for the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County will consider establishing a branch on Campbell City School property, the current Campbell library has been closed due to a bad roof.
Heidi Daniel, outgoing executive library director, said the branch will be temporarily closed until further notice. The decision to repair the roof would depend on whether the library decides to enter into an agreement with Campbell City Schools, she said.
The potential new branch would be contained within a proposed Activity Recreation and Cultural Center, or ARCC, the district plans to build. The ARCC, however, would not be open until sometime in 2018 at the earliest.
Campbell Superintendent Matt Bowen laid out his vision for the ARCC at a special meeting Monday of the library’s board.
Bowen envisions the building as a community hub.
Phas I would include two regulation basketball courts, a 160-meter track, classrooms for a STEM school operated by the Mahoning County Educational Service Center and Mahoning County Career and Technical Center and, potentially, the 2,500-square-foot library branch.
Phases II and III would add multipurpose rooms and an auditorium.
The building would be located along state Route 616 near the district’s K-7 school.
While Bowen didn’t have details on the cost of construction for the library’s portion of the building, he said the shared services would make it cheaper than building a stand-alone building. The library would pay for utilities and maintenance at cost.
“We’re not looking to make money off the library,” Bowen said.
Trustees said they would need more information on the project’s cost before agreeing to participate.
Bowen said he’s hoping for a summer 2018 groundbreaking.
The Campbell branch also has been under consideration for consolidation with the Struthers and Brownlee Woods branches. If the board enters into an agreement with Campbell City Schools, Brett Hendricks of BSHM Architects, said the consolidation plan would involve only Struthers and Brownlee Woods.
Hendricks is one of two people leading a team of consultants hired by the library last summer to determine the best course of action for the branches.
The team assessed all three facilities, and Hendricks said the roof of the Campbell branch needs replaced before winter.
In other business, the board voted to hire Susan Merriman as the library’s interim director at a salary of $106,000 with no benefits effective July 10. Daniel will leave mid-July to become president and CEO of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore. Merriman previously served as the library’s fiscal officer.