It’s been seven years since the Leland Township Public Library transitioned from a township governance model to independent operations. Ever since, Library Director Mark Morton has been vocal about how the greater freedom of the new model was opening important doors for the library – including the ability to plan for an ambitious renovation and expansion project. But that project has never come to fruition – until now. On the heels of pandemic delays and other project snags, Morton says it’s finally go time for the library revitalization. The Leelanau Ticker has the inside scoop.

Last month, in his July newsletter, Morton wrote that, “After years of careful planning and overcoming various delays, including those caused by the COVID pandemic, we are thrilled to announce that we are finally ready to showcase our ideas for an expanded and renovated library to the community at large.” The email officially kicked off a formal informational campaign for the project, which continued with an open house on July 22. Attendees got their first glimpse at what the library will become in the future, including an expanded and modernized floorplan that will encompass everything from new quiet spaces to ADA-accessible restrooms.

The expansion will bring an additional 3,000 square feet to the Leland Library while also revamping existing spaces. Features will include a meeting room with space for 30-50 participants, a “newly configured” space for kids programs, a dedicated quiet reading room with an adjoining patio (both with views of the Leland River), two study rooms, revamped shelving “to better accommodate the extensive collection of books,” a newly designed business center, a reimagined office for library staff, a kitchenette, an ADA-compliant restroom, a brand-new HVAC system powered by geothermal and solar energy, and expanded storage space. The project also includes several exterior adjustments, including landscaping work and a parking lot adjustment that will move handicapped parking closing to the entrance.

Cost estimates for the project are around $3.5 million, which Morton notes will have to be paid for through a capital fundraising campaign. (Taxpayers fund library operations by way of a millage, but capital projects like this one aren’t covered under that model.) Morton says the library already has a “nucleus fund” of $500,000 in place to get things started, plus another $200,000 or so that donors have pledged. The plan is to start raising additional funds soon, with the goal of breaking ground in the fall of 2024.

“With the Old Art Building and the Leelanau Historical Society right next door on the same campus, we don’t want to have all kinds of excavation and heavy equipment going during the summer season,” Morton says when asked about the autumn start date. “That would just be too much of a disruption. So the idea will be to break ground in the fall and then have most of work completed by spring.” Morton estimates a year-long timeline to get the renovation totally finished, which would put the library's grand reopening in the fall of 2025.

“And then as far as operating [during the project], we are going to have to move,” Morton adds. “It's just so expensive to do a half and half thing, where we’d move the library to one side of the building while they do the work on one half, and then move it all over to the other side. Instead, we'll do something similar to what the Glen Lake Library did in Empire when they renovated a few years ago. They moved out and put most of their collection in storage.”

Therein lies one big step of the renovation planning process: Finding an alternative location in Leland where the library can continue to operate during the yearlong renovation. Morton tells the Leelanau Ticker the goal will be to provide a space where locals can work and access the internet and that could accommodate a small collection of books. “Since we’ll be greatly reduced in size, we won’t be able to have access to most of our stacks, but we can use interlibrary loan [to get the books that patrons are looking for],” he says.

For his part, Morton is thrilled to finally be moving forward with this long-time-coming endeavor. After the Leland Library went independent in 2016, the library’s new board identified “the goal of creating a larger and reconfigured space that better aligns with modern library services” as part of its first strategic plan. The board subsequently hired Quinn Evans Architects to perform a “comprehensive assessment” of the library and its priorities, and to generate a renovation plan that would “incorporate the objectives of the strategic plan.”

The study, which tracked library operations between 2017 and 2022, both underlined the need for a revitalized library space and identified key aspects that should be included in the new design. One takeaway was that the library has grown considerably: The number of books and other physical items in circulation is up 15 percent, registered patron numbers have jumped 32 percent, Wi-Fi sessions at the library have increased by 60 percent, and children’s programming has doubled.

Morton says it’s something of a blessing that the renovation didn’t happen before COVID, given that the pandemic era shifted the way people use libraries. “We get requests every day now for somebody to be able to get online, use our internet, or have a meeting,” he says. “We just had somebody this morning that wanted to do a job interview and needed a quiet room and our internet, and all our spaces were full, so she ended up on the lawn.”

With so many people working remotely now, the library has become a de-facto work and meeting place, and that is straining facility capacity. Last year, 266 community groups encompassing 2,370 people used the library’s main meeting room, posing difficulties for the library as it tried to schedule its own “library-specific programming” around all the bookings.

“We try to accommodate people as much as we can, but in the summertime especially, we get several requests a day for quiet rooms, and we have to turn some people away,” Morton says. The new renovation, by adding new study and reading rooms, will make it easier for the library to meet the burgeoning demand.

More details about the renovation project are available on the Leland Township Public Library website.