GALWAY ANTICIPATES NEW LIBRARY
Fundraising goal set at $350,000
GALWAY, N.Y. » Almost 30,000 items are jam-packed inside the Galway Public Library’s 1,800-square-foot building, with just five parking spaces outside.
That will all change in another 18 months or so, when a new, $2.6 million facility, three times larger than the current one, opens its doors.
The new library’s more spacious setting, planned for East Street, is expected to increase circulation and make possible a wider range of community-oriented programs for kids and adults alike.
“That’s the main advantage,” said Deb Flint, library manager. “We’ll have a lot more space for programming. We had children’s programs almost every day this summer, such as Artful Mondays, yoga classes and a Lego club. In two weeks, we’re going to start an afternoon tea for adults. We also have technology classes for seniors, and a reading and writing club.”
In June, voters approved bonding $1.15 million for the project. Another $1 million has been pledged from private sources, and plans call for raising $350,000 with a multifaceted campaign focused on gifts and grants.
“This is a school district library, so it includes the whole town of Galway, a good share of Providence, a significant portion of Charlton and parts of Milton, Glenville, Amsterdam and Broadalbin,” said Arlene Rhodes, library board president. “We have support from all those places, plus, we’ve gotten donations from people who grew up in Galway and have moved elsewhere. They keep in touch with what’s going on and want to support this, as well. There’s a strong feeling of community in Galway.”
The 5,930-square-foot building has been designed by the Ballston Spa-based architectural firm Butler Rowland Mays. A spring groundbreaking is expected, with construction taking about a year.
“It should hopefully be done by summer of 2019,” Flint said.
For a small facility, the existing library has a big role in this steadily growing rural community, whose population includes many country dwellers who commute to jobs in Schenectady, Albany and their surrounding suburbs.
Melanie Efaw of Amsterdam makes special trips to Galway so her home-schooled children, Caelan and Carsyn, can take part in library activities there.
“They come to this library because of the programs,” she said. “The people here go above and beyond to provide good programs. And we love the community, we like the atmosphere.”
Even in this Netflix age, many people still visit the library to take out movie DVDs. Peggy Germain and her teenage daughter, Rachel, stopped by Wednesday afternoon to use its computers.
“We have Wi-Fi,” Flint said. “Sometimes people park outside when we’re closed and use laptops in their cars.”
The library purchased land for the new building, a 13.6-acre site, in 2013 from David and Katherine Michalski for $103,500. Since then, buildings such as the former Galway Market have become available, which might have met the library’s need for more space, but the proposed building has modern features, which might be difficult to incorporate into an older building.
In addition to a much bigger parking area, it will have a children’s room, teen area, reading area and program room for meetings and events. The current building, a former Odd Fellows hall, has a maximum capacity of 23 people, which limits special events and activities.
“The new program room will be a huge asset,” Flint said.
A separate multi-purpose room can be used for such things as tutoring, business meetings and archival storage.
In the addition to maintenance and overhead, the library’s $157,840 budget pays Flint’s salary, as well as those of four clerks and a bookkeeper. Dedicated volunteers play a valuable role, with duties such as shelving books and helping out with special projects. Flint said there are no immediate plans for hiring more people when the new library opens.
“We think we can still cover it with the staff we have,” she said.