Public forum set for Shutesbury library project on Tuesday

By SCOTT MERZBACH

Staff Writer

Published: 04-10-2023 4:41 PM

SHUTESBURY — A Boston architect, working with a civil engineer and landscape architect, is beginning the process of developing a floor plan and a site plan for the $6.4 million, 5,490-square-foot library to be constructed at 66 Leverett Road.

With Oudens Ello Architecture in the midst of creating the schematic design, the Shutesbury Library Building Committee is holding an in-person public forum on the project Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Shutesbury Elementary School, 23 West Pelham Road.

People will also be able to participate and offer comments via Zoom through a link on the town calendar at shutesbury.org.

“The Library Building Committee is honored to be charged with stewarding this long-anticipated and important project for our town,” Elaine Puleo, chair of the building committee, and Mary Anne Antonellis, library director, said in a joint statement. “We are ready to share the developing schematic design in a public forum where townspeople can give input into the developing plans for the new Shutesbury library.”

The architects and the building committee are considering three options for the project, which is largely being funded by a state Small Library Pilot Project grant. One is a rectangular building parallel to Leverett Road; the second is a rectangular building perpendicular to Leverett Road; and the third is an L-shaped building.

Over the next couple of weeks, the architects will incorporate program elements into a floor plan, and landscaping and engineering elements into the site plan, which is sensitive to the wetlands on the property, also known as Lot O-32.

The Selectboard is meeting Wednesday at 6 p.m. to present the draft Public Involvement Plan for the site under the state Department of Environmental Protection’s waste site cleanup. Portions of the site, on the other end from where the library is to be built, have oil and other hazardous materials associated with it being leased by the U.S. Air Force and operated as the Shutesbury-Westover Remote Site between 1957 and 1967.

Both the Library Building Committee and architects have had preliminary conversations with the Conservation Commission, Board of Health, tree warden and Selectboard.

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Last year, Annual Town Meeting voters authorized spending almost $1.3 million and borrowing up to $1.17 million for the new library. The borrowing was later approved in a Proposition 2½ debt-exclusion vote.

On April 4, 181 donors contributed $53,510 on National Library Giving Day. That supplements more than $300,000 already raised for the project.

Should all go according to plan, the new library, to replace the M.N. Spear Memorial Library that opened in 1902, will break ground next March and open a year later.

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