Plans for the much anticipated new Erving Library will be delayed slightly after the town, and three others in Franklin County, were put on a waitlist for construction grants by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners on Thursday.
Nine cities or towns across the state received the provisional funding and 24 others were put on a waitlist. The funding is provisional because it hinges on the town’s ability to pass a vote to match the funding.
Greenfield was on top of the waitlist, Erving was seventh, Deerfield was 12 on the list, and Orange was 24.
As for Greenfield, which requested $9.3 million and was first on the waitlist, Mayor William Martin said the waitlist was expected. The Town Council voted to apply for the grant, but has yet to approve the matching funds, which must be done before the town gets the funding.
“We thought we had a very competitive grant application but really thought we were going to be put on the waiting list,” Martin said. “So that’s really good news. And the other good news is we’re number one on the waiting list.”
According to a press release from the MBLC, the towns on the waitlist will receive grant funding as it becomes available.
Erving Librarian Barbara Friedman said this was good news for the town and that the library would be built, just not this year. Erving’s grant requested $2.7 million, which would have covered about half of the cost of the new library.
Friedman said she had been working on this project for five years, and the town formally assembled a committee three years ago, so this has been a long process. In May, the town approved the matching funding during town meeting.
The crowd at the meeting burst into applause when the vote was approved, and the project appears to have wide support in Erving.
“We will be very excited to open those doors, it’s still in the near future,” she said.
Friedman said that the Erving Library hasn’t been renovated or improved since 1961 and that it is currently very small, at 1,862 square feet. The proposed library, which would be located near the Senior Center and Erving Elementary School, would be 7,800 square feet, but when excluding the room the book shelving will take up, it’s similar in size to the Senior Center, according to Friedman.
“We would love to be closer to the top of the list, but the project is still a go, and it’s just a matter of time until we get a new library,” she said.
Deerfield’s Tilton Library was placed 12th on the grant waitlist, with an expected award of $3,944,338. That’s about half of a projected $7.8 million needed for library renovations which, if approved, will expand the current library’s footprint from 4,300 to 11,000 square feet. The remaining money will come through fundraising and other sources such as the town’s Community Preservation Act fund.
“It’s good news for us. We’re placed on a waiting list, and we expect to receive news in a couple of years,” said the library’s director, Sara Woodbury. “We’ll have more time for community input, and to determine what’s the best thing for the town. There will be informational meetings held this fall about the grant process, and as we go along we’ll have more meetings.”
Along with more public computers, Woodbury said upgrades will include a “larger children’s room, places for quiet study — now, when people come into the library there’s no place for people who want to read or study — so there will be a separate reading and study space. There will be more room for books, and rooms for author talks, a library meeting room where programs can be held, a staff room, and more bathrooms.”