Site Selected For Dp Library
The Spokane County Library District board selected a donated piece of land as the home of Deer Park’s new library.
The one-acre parcel is adjacent to the Deer Park Hospital and Health Center and is owned by the Dominican Network, which also operates Sacred Heart Medical Center.
The site is located seven blocks east of the current library, which has been in the basement of Deer Park’s city hall since the early ‘80s.
Integrus Architecture of Spokane will design the $1.2 million project. About $850,000 is earmarked for actual construction. Contract bids are scheduled for April 1998 with construction to begin the following May.
The library is scheduled to open in November 1998.
“We’re thrilled that the Dominican Network stepped up and offered us the option of building adjacent to its Deer Park hospital campus,” said district board of trustees chairman Vick Myers-Canfield.
Before the offer of the land, the library board was probably going to have to rent property from the city, according to Mike Wirt, Spokane County library director.
The new library will be within walking distance of Deer Park junior and senior high schools and Arcadia Elementary. It will be a block off Crawford Street, a main east-west route through town.
“It meets our site selection criteria and it fits well with the hospital’s campus development plan,” Myers-Canfield said. “It’s a great partnership.”
Cathy Simchuk, the Dominican Network’s administrator in Deer Park, said the network decided to donate the land because it wasn’t being used.
“Locating the new Deer Park library adjacent to our facilities makes very good use of property that we won’t be needing for future development while serving an important community need,” Simchuk said.
“It also offers opportunities for joint activities, such as the use of the library meeting room facilities for health education programs,” she said.
Funding for the library was approved by library district voters last year as part of a $7.6 million capital improvement program bond issue that included new and remodeled branches, a new computer system and new library material.
, DataTimes