Palmer council approves larger library design, leaving some space unfinished

Palmer’s city council approved a plan for a new public library at a Tuesday, Oct. 29 special meeting. The council opted for a variation of a 18,000-square-foot design approved earlier and a 20,000-square-foot option prepared to allow additional office space for city workers now in cramped quarters.

Palmer’s current library building was heavily damaged by a roof collapse during heavy snow. The project now planned would replace the building.

The current plan is to build the facility with the additional capacity but to keep it unfinished to save costs. However, council members asked architect Gary Wolf to keep the option open for eventually adding the offices in the unfinished space.

The additional square footage, unfinished, will add about $1 million to the estimated $15 million cost. Doing the full development to use the new space for offices would bring the price to about $20 million, it was estimated.

However, these are only estimates. The actual price will depend on what contractor bid. With the council’s approval now given Wolf Architecture will now proceed to preparation of the final engineering and design and the bid documents. The goal has been to have the bi package finished and bids solicited in March but that could slip to April, Wolf said.

Wolf said the office-use option for the extra space was expensive because an extra set of stairs would be required by code as a safety measure for city workers using the new offices if they were built.

The unfinished space option would not include the stairs although Wolf said his staff would attempt to provide for future stairs as an option.

Wolf said construction costs are continuing to rise and it would be prudent to build larger, for future growth, because it will be cost-effective in the long term.

“You’ll never have chance again to build for what you will pay now,” because of rising costs,” Wolf said.

Former city manager Stephen Jellie had requested the option for the office space as part of a plan to relieve crowding and improve working conditions for city employees. It was also part of a plan to ease other pressures in the city budget, Jellie told Wolf.

Jellie intended to present the new library plan to the council for approval when he presented his 2025 budget but he resigned before he had the chance to do that.

Palmer Mayor Steve Carrington told the council on Tuesday that Jellie had shown him a one-page sketch of the additional office space plan but did not have costs or other details. Those were to come when the budget was to be presented by Jellie, which did not happen.