Grant boosts new library

Coeur d’Alene’s sleek new public library – the first the city’s ever built – exists only in an architect’s vision.

But the 38,000-square-foot building moved closer to reality this week after the Seattle foundation operated by billionaire Paul Allen approved a $100,000 matching grant to pay for it.

“It’s very difficult to get money through grants for bricks and mortar,” said Ruth Pratt, executive director of the Coeur d’Alene Public Library Foundation. “The Allen grant was the major one out.”

Pratt said she and other organizers are confident they can raise the $100,000 in new community donations by April 2007, a requirement to receive the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation donation.

Pratt said backers so far have raised about $600,000 of the $1.4 million they’ll need to finish and furnish the library, designed by Architects West in Coeur d’Alene. Set for construction on a lot across from Coeur d’Alene City Hall, the two-story building will nearly quadruple the size of the current space on Harrison Avenue.

The current site, a former public utility building, reached its capacity for books and patrons more than 15 years ago. The $7.2 million project will be financed in part by $3 million in general obligation bonds approved by voters a year ago.

City leaders are entertaining confidential inquiries about the current library building, the sale of which is expected to generate about $1 million, Pratt said. Private foundation fundraising efforts have generated about $1.2 million. All told, backers must find another $900,000 in community donations to complete the project, Pratt said.

That effort is complicated by several concurrent capital campaigns. Organizers of the proposed Salvation Army Kroc Center are seeking $5 million, while backers of a fledgling Boys & Girls Club center in Post Falls hope to raise nearly $3 million. And other, smaller efforts are continuing as well.

The convergence of donation requests is new for the city, Pratt said.

“It’s really driven by the fact that we’ve had such a growth spurt,” she added.

Construction is expected to begin this spring and take a year to 15 months, Pratt said.

Although the new library will be nearly four times the size of the old one, architects have designed the space so that staffing levels will remain about the same, said Troy Typeset, city finance director. It takes the equivalent of 16.3 full-time employees to run the library now; in the new building, that number will climb to 18.

The operating budget, too, will rise only slightly, from about $873,000 this year to about $976,000 in 2007, when the new library is open, Typeset said.

“We’re not about building something and then not being able to sustain it,” he said.