New Leonardtown library needs site

Location unsettled as athletic fields would be displaced

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Among the upstairs offices and meeting space is a bathroom⁄shower room with tall urinals and bathroom stalls with no doors. Some Christmas decorations are stored in the shower area.

‘‘It wasn’t designed as a library,” said Kathleen Reif, St. Mary’s County’s library director. ‘‘We’re trying to put a square peg in a round hole every day.”

It was once a barracks and then a work-release facility.

The Leonardtown library needs a new home. The county government has plans to spend the money to build one, but first a new location for athletic fields will have to be found if the library is to move where some want it.

The library trustees would like to move just next door to the sports fields in front of Leonard Hall and the governmental center. But where would the kids who use those fields play?

County government has been looking for other properties for athletic fields. The St. Mary’s County Department of Recreation and Parks is bringing forward a proposal for parkland acquisition and the money is there to make an offer, said Phil Rollins, director. The proposal could come as early as next week.

‘‘The library board and I want [a new library] in a very visible location,” Reif said.

Renovating the existing building would be more costly than building a new one, partly because it has been designated as an historic structure by the Maryland Historical Trust. The exterior of the building is decaying; it has no elevator and is just too small for its patrons.

There is no room to add to the collection. The area for teens is only separated from the children’s area by a bookshelf. The computers are in the middle of the library. There is only one designated quiet area and it’s a large reading room.The much newer Lexington Park library has enclosed rooms for reading, meeting and tutoring and a whole room just for computer use.

The Leonardtown library is 15,000 square feet downstairs, with 4,000 square feet upstairs. The new facility could be 40,000 square feet and the cost estimate is $12.9 million.

The county is committed to keeping a new library near the governmental center campus, Reif said.

‘‘It’s very key to have visibility from the road,” she said. ‘‘If it’s hidden, people tend not to think about you.”

Commissioner Thomas A. Mattingly Sr. (D) said Monday that he would like to see construction begin or at least have funds in place for the new library before his term ends in November 2010. ‘‘It’ll be nice to have the library with road frontage” at the site in front of Leonard Hall’s drill hall, he said, but at the same time, he doesn’t want to take away athletic fields.

‘‘We’d like to find a piece of property to accommodate a major park,” in Leonardtown, he said. Dorsey Park, between Leonardtown and Hollywood, doesn’t have any more level space for playing fields.

Rollins said that during the warm months of the year, there is an activity on the sports fields at Miedzinski Park in Leonardtown every evening.

He also noted that Miedzinski Park was funded by donations from the community.

The Leonardtown library branch had 225,000 visits this past fiscal year, while Lexington Park had 250,000 visits and Charlotte Hall had 140,000 visits.

The Leonardtown library building was built in 1954 and the library moved in in 1985. The library collection was at Tudor Hall before that where the weight of the collection was straining the walls. Tudor Hall was built in 1756 and became a county library in 1950. Before that, people in St. Mary’s could borrow books from the St. Mary’s Reading and Debating Society or from the small library in Frank Knox Elementary School.