Northampton Gazette 4/24/10

SHUTESBURY - Plans for a new Shutesbury library will be unveiled at a public forum Monday, as supporters gear up to win town backing.

A forum Monday at 7 p.m. at the Shutesbury Elementary School comes in advance of a proposal to Town Meeting voters that would allow the Library Facility Needs Assessment Committee to apply for a state grant that would cover 60 percent of the proposed building's costs.

Town Meeting will convene May 1.

Oudens Ello Architecture, the architectural firm charged with designing the new library, will make a presentation to residents outlining features of the proposed building. The new library would be 5,700 square feet - the town's current library, M.N. Spear Memorial Library, measures 900 square feet - and would include a children's room, a young adult room and a community meeting room with a capacity for 80 people, said Mary Anne Antonellis, library director.

The building also incorporates "green" features, Antonellis said, including a geothermal heating system and solar panels on the roof.

"If there are five people in here, they kind of trip over each other," Antonellis said. "This beautiful little library was built 108 years ago, and it is a beautiful, charming building that has served us well, but it was not built for 1,800 people."

Shutesbury's population has risen from around 400 in the 1970s to approximately 1,800 today, Antonellis said.

"This is a real opportunity for the town to have a new community building and have the state pay up to 60 percent of the cost," Antonellis said. The estimated cost of the project is $3.1 million.

Three years of work

The Library Facility Needs Assessment Committee has been working on a proposal since 2007, when the committee secured a Planning and Design Grant from the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners.

With the help of that grant, the committee researched library capacity, on the one hand, and the town's level of need for library services on the other. It concluded the town needed a much larger library to serve its population, Antonellis said.

The architectural team is using the committee's findings. Now, that panel is preparing to ask Town Meeting for permission to pursue a library construction grant from the state.

"At Town Meeting we are just asking for permission to apply for the grant," she said. "If we get the grant, we will come back and say we need to come up with the rest of the money."

The state library grant program is funded by a $100 million state bond. The current round of grant applications is due in January, with awards made in July 2011, Antonellis said.