Let’s build a library

One lesson learned on the long journey to a 21st-century downtown library for Wichita is that it will need to be a community gathering place with top-notch technology and special appeal to children and families.

That’s where the Wichita Public Library Foundation is headed in boldly expanding its fundraising goal and vision, as announced Wednesday. Instead of aiming for $2.5 million in private funds, the foundation has $4.4 million in gifts and pledges on its way to raising $8 million for what it’s calling the Advanced Learning Library to be built at Second and McLean.

Now, the community needs to catch the enthusiasm and contribute toward this public-private partnership, which foundation chairman Don Barry aptly called a “signature project” for a city “on the cusp of a renaissance.”

Some Wichitans may wonder why the foundation is resetting the bar higher for itself, necessitating a larger footprint and revised design in the process. The City Council, after all, only requested the $2.5 million in private donations for the $30 million project, which had been downscaled during the city budget turbulence of the Great Recession and has been in the works since 2006.

But raising $8 million, with the key gift of $3 million from the Dwane and Velma Wallace Foundation, will allow for a larger children’s area and better serve early literacy. The library’s well-regarded genealogy section also will be enhanced, with the room and staff to enable oral histories. The larger private investment will add 10,000 square feet, for a total 103,000 or more.

The three City Council members who met with The Eagle editorial board about the capital campaign cited other reasons to go bigger. Lavonta Williams likes the prospects of more space for teens and small group collaboration, food service and improved Wi-Fi. James Clendenin, who “didn’t want the same old, same old thing” in a new library, thinks this one will help fill the gap for the local families and businesses that lack access to technology, while proving an economic driver and a good partner with Wichita State University’s innovation campus. Janet Miller sees the new library as a community asset that will complement neighboring Exploration Place, also a beneficiary of the generosity and dedication to children of the late Velma Wallace.

The library supporters on the council, including Mayor Jeff Longwell, will need to join foundation board members in making the case to the remaining skeptics for a new, digitally savvy downtown learning hub to replace the 48-year-old Central Library, which cannot be easily and cost-effectively updated and expanded at this point.

The expectation is that the City Council will move the project to the bidding phase late this year, with construction starting next spring and lasting two years. For more information or to help out, go to http://www.supportwichitalibraries.org/.

Individual donors and businesses should support this next big development for Wichita’s cultural identity, educational infrastructure, riverfront and quality of life.

Let’s build a library. It’s time.

For the editorial board, Rhonda Holman

This story was originally published September 9, 2015 at 7:07 PM with the headline "Let’s build a library."