Paul Duryea, who will serve as the manager for the new Latonia branch of the Kenton County Library, presented to the Latonia Business Association Monday, reviewing the library’s plans for the new branch.
“It’s been something that’s been ongoing for a hundred years now to try to get expanded services out here to this part of the community,” Duryea said.
Duryea currently serves as the branch manager for the library’s Covington branch. He discussed the history of library services in Latonia, pulling from archived photographs and other artifacts the library had collected over the years.
He discussed Forest Pope’s drugstore, for instance, which held about 150 library items for checkout in the early twentieth century. He compared that to similar services currently available at the Roost Latonia, a local coffee shop where people can check out and return library books at a dedicated shelf near the food counter. The Roost also offers community story hours in partnership with the library.
“A lot of people are really excited about it,” said the Roost’s owner, Billie Mocabee, about the prospect of new branch.
Duryea used this as a jumping-off point to discuss the library’s local outreach efforts broadly.
“Our strategic plan, it gives us two things…,” Duryea said. “We will get to know the entire community and use our position as an anchor institution to bring about positive change.”
Specifically, Duryea said, it would allow kids and families more access to library services through conventional borrowing services and community learning activities like story hours and similar events. The branch would feature programming for all age groups.
“We know if we can kind of make those early inroads in early education, get books in kids’ hands and reading at an early level, a lot of some of the problems that we deal with maybe can be lessened a little bit,” Duryea said.
Duryea then showed the meeting attendees some preliminary floor plans for the branch, which will be located at the Latonia Commerce Center, which also houses the Enzweiler Building Institute, Big Lots and Fairhaven Thrift Store. The branch building was still in the planning stages, Duryea said, and the renderings he showed–produced by architectural firm REH&A, who is also working on the Ludlow Schools expansion project–were not finalized.
However, Duryea gave a description of what the library hoped to achieve. The library was aiming for a space of about 10,500 feet, the interior of which would have an “art deco-ish” theme.
“The whole vibe of the building is trying to be more cozy living room theme,” Duryea said.
The branch is 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 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 said the library hoped to have final architectural drawings by March or April, start construction in the summer and begin hiring in the fall. Optimistically, he said, the branch would open around Thanksgiving. This timeline was not hard and fast, he added, and may change depending on the circumstances. Finally, he said the branch was looking to employ about six full-time positions and five part-time positions, hopefully recruited from the local community. These figures are also subject to change.
“We want our staff to reflect the community we serve, and so having people from the neighborhood is very important to us as well,” Duryea said.
To conclude, Duryea invited the attendees and people in the community to contribute any historical memorabilia, including photos, to the library so that it could potentially be displayed in the branch once it was opened. As an example, he showed a photo of a famous race horse from Latonia, Go Well, who was the 1913 Latonia Derby champion and placed third in the same year’s Kentucky Derby. This photo and some other historical materials he’d located will be displayed in the branch once its open.
“So I’ve been kind of trying to work on finding other elements like this to be able to incorporate into the plan,” Duryea said. “So when we have people come out, we can kind of help tell the history of this community in the building.”
You can learn more about contributing to the library’s collection of historical items at the library’s Faces and Places webpage. Mocabee also said that people interested in contributing to the collection can bring their items to The Roost Latonia on Decoursey Avenue to get help on contributing.