Library board takes step towards pavilion

Gibson Memorial Library’s Board of Trustees approved a number of bids Monday for the construction of the library’s planned pavilion. The items will continue to the Creston City Council for approval.

This progress comes after library director Gabriel Chrisman met with members of the city’s public works and code compliance, as well as city administrator Mike Taylor.

“It boiled down to a couple things which they were concerned about,” Chrisman said. “The main two were the water runoff being managed appropriately since we were adding a lot of impervious surfaces out there, and the soil quality as far as the depths of the frames.”

Chrisman later explained soil quality refers to soil density and compatibility, not the health of the soil.

While they believed the soil would be usable to do reports from the 1998 renovations, the board decided to have a surveyor check the land to “cover all bases.”

The board also approved a number of bids for the construction of the pavilion, including for concrete, electricity and bricking. Along with the pavilion itself, extra parking will be added to the library through this project.

“That’s going to be two handicap parking spots for sure, and then there was a slight debate about whether we were fitting three or four in the rest of the space that is there, but it’s going to add another five or six parking spaces,” Chrisman said. “The pavilion itself is basically set up to be pretty high quality, with cathedral ceiling, good quality wood, and then roofing which matches the building and bricks around the columns that match the building to try to tie it in and make it look like it belongs to the building here.”

Chrisman said the addition of the pavilion would allow a number of new programs to be available.

“I already have a few people lined up for those. For example, the human society wants to do a dog program, but you can’t really do that in the building right now. Doing that out in the pavilion would be great,” Chrisman said. “We want to do some music programs out there. Anything really noisy.”

Chrisman said the space would also be available to community members to use.

“If people want to reserve it for something, they can reserve it, and we don’t have to have as many rules in that space for noise or food or anything else,” he said.

As the library gets closer to building the pavilion, Chrisman hopes to expedite the process.

“My goal is to get things scheduled as tightly as I can to get things done this fall,” Chrisman said.

In other library news...

The library has the first statistics of Kanopy use after adding the streaming service to library perks in July. Gibson Memorial’s Kanopy has had 30 plays and 500 views. They hope to encourage more library users to access this streaming service, which focuses on documentaries, foreign films, classic cinema and independent films.

The library board is still looking for Creston residents to become board trustees. Those interested can find more information at the library’s front desk.