The Kenton County Planning Commission unanimously approved a public review of the new Latonia branch of the Kenton County Library on Thursday.
The new branch will be located in the Latonia Commerce Center along Winston Avenue in Covington. Enzweiler Building Institute, Big Lots and Fairhaven Thrift Store are also located at the commerce center.
The land is about 12.4 acres in area, and the building itself contains about 12,000 square feet. The branch will share about 560 parking spaces with the other businesses at the center.
The library does not own the building and will be leasing the space for up to five years with the option to extend the lease in the future. Noah Onkst, an architect with Robert Ehmet Hayes & Associates who spoke before the commission at their meeting on Thursday, said that construction costs were about $3 million, a price tag he said the library was able to meet without raising additional taxes.
In addition, the branch will be centrally located within about a mile’s walking distance of four different schools: Latonia Elementary, Ninth District Elementary, Holmes High School and Holy Cross High School.
Onkst described a library study conducted a few years back that tracked which library branch people in Latonia tended to travel to—the Independence, Erlanger or Covington branch. The study found that roughly an equal number of people traveled to each location, so the new branch would be well situated for the community.
“That helped them choose this location in that it was kind of in a no man’s land for library service,” Onkst said.
Paul Duryea, who will serve as the branch’s manager upon opening, stated at a presentation to the Latonia Business Association in February that the branch was aiming to carry between 10,000 to 15,000 items with a focus on popular reading and children’s books.
The branch also plans to have a large meeting room, capable of holding 75 chairs, and two study rooms. The size of the building, Duryea said, may preclude the library’s ability to house a lot of computer hardware, so they will be focused instead on providing infrastructure for people to hook up their own laptops and devices. In spite of this, Duryea added, there will be equipment for large format printing so that residents can print out posters and other materials.
Duryea also said in February that the library will celebrate the history of the local area by displaying memorabilia throughout its interior. He even invited community members to donate any local items and photographs related to Latonia’s history to the library so they could be displayed for visitors (learn about contributing at the library’s Faces and Places webpage).
“We’ve got a really neat design, an art deco that kind of pays homage to the Kentucky Theater that’s just around the corner there [on Southern Avenue],” Onkst said. “So, I think it’ll be something that the community can be proud of.”
Onkst went on to say that this will be the first new branch the library has opened in 30 years (the library system has added buildings in that time but not whole new branches).
The commissioners expressed some concern about parking. Commissioner Keith Logsdon, who represents Lakeside Park, discussed the layout of the commerce center and worried that traffic passing in front of the storefronts might pose a danger to library patrons, especially children and the elderly. He recommended installing traffic calming measures to address this. Onkst said he would relay the recommendation back to the library.
The commissioners, for the most part, spoke favorably of the library, in spite of the concerns about parking. In the end, the commission cast a unanimous vote to approve the public review.
Covington’s two commissioners, Kareem Simpson and Sean Pharr, spoke with LINK nky after the meeting about the prospect of a new library branch in the city.
They both wondered aloud about some of the details, such as the parking issue and the expected cost of the project, but they were broadly positive about it.
“[My family is] looking forward to it,” said Pharr, who lives in Latonia near where the library will go. “I got a 3- and a 5-year-old. We check out stacks of books.”
He added that he was interested in seeing what other services the library would provide for the area’s youth.
“I love everything they do,” said Simpson, whose first professional job was at the library’s Covington branch. “I think it’s going to be an experiment. I think it’s a great experiment, especially working in the space that needs it.”
Onkst said the library aimed to open the new branch by the end of the year.