RUTLAND — Plans to move Rutland Free Library out of downtown, and relocate it at the former College of St. Joseph campus, have fallen through.
Library trustees hoped to buy the former college library building from Heartland Developments, which plans to acquire much of the former campus from Heritage Family Credit Union to build a senior living facility.
Heartland representatives informed library leaders on Wednesday that the deal was off.
“Yesterday, Heartland Developments informed Rutland Free Library that we were no longer welcome as part of their planned development on the former CSJ campus, citing concerns that we would be used as a lever to slow down their Act 250 process,” library leaders wrote in a statement.
The plan collapsed after months of public debate about whether the library should move out of its historic building in the heart of downtown. The library is an anchor for a city center with many empty buildings, some critics of the move said.
Library leaders have struggled for years with problems in the aging 19th-century building on Court Street. The library is a private organization, but the library building is owned by the city government.
The library trustees and library director had researched what it would take to renovate the building, and the first projected cost was between $7 million and $11 million.
They trimmed their wish list for the renovation down to an estimated $1.5 million, but those cuts eliminated much of what they thought would make the renovation exciting and worthwhile to patrons.
“We’re sitting here saying, ‘Do we put that kind of money into this building that we don’t even own, and not get even half the list of what we really want to do for the future of the community?” Sharon Courcelle, president of the library board, said last week before Heartland pulled away from the plan.
Library leaders were attracted to the more modern building on the edge of town with updated facilities better suited to library patrons’ needs. The estimated cost for acquiring the College of St. Joseph library was $1.2 million, and the building had a number of features that had been cut from the downtown renovation.
Heartland Development could not be reached for comment on Friday afternoon.
There was never a deal
Library leaders are deeply disappointed; they were unanimous in believing the new building would better serve patrons. But Randal Smathers, the library director, emphasized throughout the process that the deal was never set in stone.
“We’ll figure it out,” Smathers said Friday. “I’ve been working at the Rutland Free Library as assistant director and director for over eight years now. What we’re going to do about the building has been on my desk literally every day for that time. ”
Others in the community, many of whom grew up visiting the downtown library, expressed relief that the library will remain on Court Street for now.
“There’s no shortage of things to do in that building,” said Barbara Noyes Pulling, a Rutland Town resident who has fond memories of the library from her childhood. “But I am glad that the library’s staying there and that the library is going to remain downtown.”
Smathers collected many opinions about what people wanted in a new library and said he’ll use those comments as he and the board try to reimagine a solution. He also said he’s learned that the $1.5 million renovation plan isn’t going to cut it.
Not many people had complained about the current library, he said, until he announced the plans to move.
“To hear from so many parents that they are not bringing their children to the library because they really dislike the building and the amenities that we are able to offer — I looked at the plans that we had drawn up, and now I’m really glad we did not spend that million and a half dollars,” he said. “Clearly, those plans don’t go far enough.”
Smathers said everything is back on the table — except building a $10 million “palace.” While he’s keeping an eye on federal money that could soon become available, he’s concerned in the meantime about competing with other nonprofits in the Rutland area that also need funding.
The library had saved enough money to buy the college building without help from taxpayers.
“I did not sign up to outfight every other board in Rutland County for money for a decade because if we were to raise $7 million, that’s what it would take,” he said. “We’d be in competition with every other nonprofit, with every government organization. We’d have to get every grant.”
Problems at Court Street
Expensive maintenance problems persist at the current library.
“This is the room where the ceiling fell down two years ago,” Smathers said on a tour last week, walking into the Fox Room, which is used for public events. “It was a big patch … and if it fell down 45 minutes later, it would have hit the book club.”
The building was built in 1858 to house a post office and a courthouse and was converted into the Rutland Free Library in the 1930s.
It’s recognized for its architectural individuality, which both adds to and detracts from the experience of various patrons.
“It’s one of two like it in the country,” Smathers said. “The other one is in Windsor, Vermont. It’s still within the post office, and the post office has not been able to maintain it, so you can’t use the second floor. So it’s very much a one-of-a-kind building, and we get that.”
Smathers said the library spent $250,000 between 2014 and 2019 on renovations and repairs, and he expects those maintenance costs to continue.
The problems begin before anyone enters the building, with the parking.
“Right here, you are looking at the entirety of our handicapped parking spots,” he said, gesturing to a single parallel spot on the relatively busy street.
Now that the former college building isn’t available, Smathers said the leadership will have to consider a wide array of options, such as moving the main entrance to create better handicapped parking.
The library’s front doors and pathway to the elevator aren’t suitable for all wheelchairs, and a second-floor mezzanine ramp is too steep for some wheelchairs to navigate. Many spots within the building don’t meet ADA requirements, Smathers said.
“As we’re talking about accessibility, it’s an abstract concept for people,” Smathers said at a public forum last week. “But it’s not for us. It’s people we serve, and we can’t serve them as well as we should.”
At that forum, Smathers told a story about John Gulash, a library user who had Parkinson’s disease. In the late stages of his disease, using the library became almost impossible; Gulash couldn’t make a sharp turn in his wheelchair to get to the elevator.
The only bathroom equipped with a changing table is across the building from the children’s section of the library, which Smathers said poses a challenge for parents.
A new or renovated space would also need better sight lines. Across the country, librarians have increasingly become witnesses to the opioid epidemic, and some carry naloxone, a drug that reverses an overdose.
Rutland’s librarians want to be able to monitor the general activity of patrons. Anti-Semitic flyers have been found in the books that occupy the shelves in a far corner of the library’s second-floor mezzanine.
Smathers said that, in watching patterns of people walking upstairs and downstairs, he saw what appeared to be drug deals. Also, in that second-floor corner, a patron had a seizure — out of sight from librarians.
“We were busy that day, and another patron came running down and said, ‘There’s a man having a seizure,’” Smathers said.
A new conversation
Debate about the library’s move roiled the city for several months, and many residents expressed shock that the library was considering such a big move. Many expressed that shock in letters to the editor and at public forums.
Barbara Noyes Pulling said she hopes the public has a say in the next step.
“I think it’s a good opportunity for the community, the board of trustees and the city to look at that building and see what should be done with it,” she said, and to help pay for what’s needed.
Through the last few months, Smathers said he gained an understanding of what the public needs.
“I’ll take everything that was provided to us, positive, negative and otherwise in the process, and we’ll apply that,” he said.
He also learned how strongly the community feels about having access to the library.
“Hearing from people who are really enthused about the building is great,” he said. “Hearing from people who are really enthused about the library, and about the work we do, is greater.”
