Main Library Celebrates $27M Renovation and Expansion – Business Journal Daily

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Donna Jenkins was a frequent patron of the key branch of the Community Library of Youngstown & Mahoning County when she was in grade school some 70 a long time back.

She recollects walking to Key Library frequently with her good friends following ending classes at the old St. Columba grade university downtown. “I remember bringing a significant stack of textbooks home,” she explained.

Saturday afternoon, Jenkins, with her daughter, Susan Beede, bought a seem at the recently reopened Most important Library.

“It’s amazing. Isn’t it attractive?” she mentioned.

Jenkins and Beede were amid the hundreds of site visitors from close to the Mahoning Valley – and in some conditions significantly additional absent – who attended the celebration of Primary Library’s not long ago completed $27 million renovation.

The library broke ground in August 2020 on the prolonged-contemplated job, which included design of a 6,000-square-foot addition, new landscaping and the renovation of the whole existing building, including restoration of the grand staircase entrance going through Fifth Avenue.

That restored entrance attributes what Aimee Fifarek, PLYMC executive director and CEO, explained to individuals attending the reopening ceremony is her favored component of the project: the new lampposts, “symbolizing the gentle of knowledge,” and the inscription, “For the Folks,” previously mentioned the newly put in bronze doorways.
“That’s why we’re all listed here. That’s why the library exists – for the persons,” she claimed.

A different historical component of the task was the return of the Grand Examining Room’s artwork glass ceiling and Parthenon frieze “to their former glory,” she remarked.

“We have brought the historic pieces of the library again to daily life – several of which, over the many years, were altered or taken out altogether,” she said in short remarks ahead of the ribbon-chopping ceremony reopening the space to the public.

“But this new chapter of Main Library is not only about honoring the past. It is also about imagining the choices of the long run,” she said. The new addition attributes a conference house with point out-of-the-art technology and the new culinary literacy centre that “will allow for us to honor and do our portion to pass on all of the great food stuff traditions of the Mahoning Valley,” Fifarek said.

Other features of the renovation involved creation of a makerspace with a recording studio, and a spouse and children engagement place with expanded children’s space and a focused teen area, together with meeting spaces of various sizes.  

“It’s an certainly wonderful renovation,” Carole Weimer, chairwoman of the library’s board of trustees, stated adhering to the ceremony and ribbon chopping.

As a youngster, Weimer more commonly patronized the previous North Side branch on Belmont Avenue but used Major Library additional in significant school simply because it experienced increased methods for research projects, she stated.    

“There ended up normally the naysayers who thought we maybe ought to shift Principal Library out of city into one particular of the suburbs,” she additional. “We provide a wonderful need here. If you arrive right here in the course of the 7 days, you’ll see heaps of men and women who live in this neighborhood that really do not have internet and they use the computer systems. It is a safe haven for so a lot of people today and a put they can calmly find out and enrich their lives.”

Another trustee, Alexa Sweeney Blackann, attended the celebration with her partner and 4 small children, who vary in age from 6 to 14.

“We affectionately call this a person ‘the mothership’ simply because it is the biggest, most essential library in the community. It also has unique resources than any of the other libraries,” Blackann explained.

Blackann and her spouse and children are inclined to use Principal Library the most due to the fact of its central locale, with its proximity to neighborhood assets these kinds of as Youngstown State College and Oh Wow! The Roger & Gloria Jones Children’s Middle for Science & Technological innovation.

“If you’re down here for a while. You can seriously make a day of it by accessing the other resources offered in downtown Youngstown,” she stated. 

According to Fifarek, some 40 area and regional corporations worked on the challenge, as perfectly as virtually 100 nearby trades people today, numerous of whom reside in the place.

The task architect principal with Bostwick Style Partnership, Cleveland, which collaborated with RFB Colab, Youngstown, on the historic preservation features of the task. AM Higley Co. in Cleveland and Dawn Inc. in Warren served as construction manager.

“The library and Aimee and her team have been absolute visionaries in allowing for this to happen the way it did. They truly are worthy of the bulk of the credit for setting this in movement and creating anything like this occur for the metropolis of Youngstown’s inhabitants,” explained Rick Ortmeyer, Bostwick Layout Partnership principal.

“There’s a great deal of jobs that get the gain of performing a historic renovation and generating a beautiful recreation of what was into a little something new and there is other assignments that get the likelihood to insert on and bring a little something new to a local community,” he remarked. “And there is others that form of produce wonderful outdoor spaces. But it’s a unusual chance that all 3 of these issues can materialize at after.”

Ortmeyer was amongst numerous associates of the construction and layout groups who had been on hand for the unveiling.

Julia Hagen, interior designer with Bostwick, explained the building’s transformation as “amazing.” She attended Saturday’s party with her three kids, who enjoyed the play space.

“I’m extremely psyched, extremely proud,” she remarked. “I just really liked operating on this venture.” 

Paul Santiago, web page superintendent with AM Higley, acknowledged undertaking the undertaking when the library remained in procedure during most of the building was “a activity.” Other issues the undertaking confronted provided the COVID-19 pandemic, extended direct periods and pricing of elements, and obtaining to procure replacement materials when solutions weren’t accessible.   

“But we managed to get by way of the challenges were being equipped to give them a beautiful last products,” he claimed. 

“I’m thrilled with how it turned out,” reported Paul Hagman, historic preservation architect and proprietor of RFB Colab. It “exceeded expectations,” both of those his possess and these of the men and women attending the open up household, dependent on what he read.

A person of the times Hagman recalled was the discovery that the skylight glass had just been painted in excess of as section of a 1950s modernization.

“All of the historic reference pictures that we had been only in black and white, so we didn’t know the accurate colours of the skylight until finally we have been in a position to get up there and scrape the paint away,” he said. “So that was a very exclusive minute, and the close consequence is wonderful.”

Hagman agreed with Fifarek about the significance of restoring the inscription above the Wick Avenue entrance. “That is these kinds of an significant assertion to set out there to the local community, that every person is welcome,” he reported.

Library patrons similarly had been delighted with what they observed. As of mid-afternoon, at the very least 500 people and people experienced attended, not like personnel and trustees, stated Maggie Henderson, PLYMC strategic communications officer.

Tom Milligan of Boardman was examining out the culinary literacy center, a source he is especially interested in utilizing because the library will be supplying cooking classes.

“I’m not too good in the kitchen area so this would be a welcome addition to me,” he remarked. He also mentioned Main Library was “long overdue” for renovation.

“All of the other branch libraries are so excellent,” he mentioned. “They’re stunning and there’s no reason why this one particular shouldn’t be the exact caliber as all those, primarily for the individuals in Youngstown to be capable to use this.” I consider it’s wonderful.”  

Carol McCoy, who frequently uses the Poland department library as properly as the Michael Kusalaba department on the West Facet, explained the renovated setting up as “amazing.”  She attended the open up residence with her husband, Bob.

“I do some down below for packages and for some of their crafting, and when I’m in the location and just want to get some books listed here,” she reported. She seems to be forward to utilizing the department far more, especially the machines in the makerspace.  

Courtney and Stephen Poullas, who are living in the Handel’s Community on the city’s South Facet, brought their two youngsters – Gracie, 8, and Michael, 4 — to the event. They on a regular basis use the Newport branch, which is within going for walks length, two to 4 periods for every 7 days to attend programs and borrow publications and films, Courtney Poullas reported.

They come to Main in all probability regular monthly. Saturday they had been in the family engagement room, which opened to the public previous August.    

“The young ones enjoy it. It’s great for the neighborhood,” Courtney Poullas mentioned.

Also in the family engagement region was Mackenzie Ashok of Columbus, who experienced her 3-12 months-aged daughter and 10-calendar year-previous nephew. At first from Sebring, she was in city traveling to a mate who works at the library.

“We go to all the various libraries in Columbus,” she reported. “Compared to a good deal of other libraries, there is so substantially below. The young children are truly savoring on their own.”   

Fifarek mentioned that renovating Most important Library was an early priority for her right after she arrived in 2018.

“I know how extensive this group has been ready for this task to be performed. It was in the strategic approach when I arrived right here,” she explained. “So it was a priority for me to start off out, and I’m so pleased to say that regardless of the pandemic, provide chain difficulties and al of the adjustments and substitutions that we have experienced in the course of the past pair of many years we have been able to see this day happen.”   

On top of that, she acknowledged that a person of her favorite spaces in the recently renovated making is the cultural literacy heart, which also will present the possibility for individuals to appear jointly to discover about fantastic nourishment.

It also will provide as a resource to aid the neighborhood to digitize and preserve that facet of area history so those people culinary traditions can be passed on.

“I am a person who enjoys foodstuff. I enjoy having, I adore learning about food items, I enjoy cooking,” she claimed. “I felt like I was coming to a group of like-minded people when I arrived to Mahoning County since of the way we celebrate foods traditions.”   

Pictured at top rated: Aimee Fifarek, PLYMC government director and CEO, speaks at the ribbon-reducing ceremony Saturday.

Far more: June 9, 2022
Renovation, Expansion Turns Library into Community Cornerstone

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