Work begins on $8.9M Republic library

While winter weather initially pushed a groundbreaking ceremony indoors, dirt was still turned Jan. 16 as the Springfield-Greene County Library District officially commenced a multimillion-dollar construction project in Republic.

Work is ongoing for a new Republic Branch Library on the same property where its current facility operates at 921 N. Lindsey Ave. The new 22,000-square-foot facility is being built just north of the building it has occupied since 2009, said Tysha Shay, manager of the Republic branch. A spring 2026 completion date is expected, she said.

The Library District Board of Trustees on Dec. 17 approved the project’s overall construction cost at $8.9 million. The new branch will more than double its current space, she said, adding the library will remain open during construction. Once the new building is completed, the existing structure will be demolished and converted into greenspace.

Shay, who has led the Republic library branch for five years, said the new facility will be “a destination library.”

“What we have designed and are going to build is bringing a lot of amenities to the community,” Shay said. “When you travel in Springfield, that’s what you expect at the city branches.”

It will feature an expanded youth services section that has a much larger children’s area with a dedicated story time space and an adjoining teen area, she said. Additionally, it will include six meeting rooms, a maker space for patrons to create recordings, music and videos, an outdoor patio and a nature walking trail.

She said the library building was essentially designed with two sides.

“One side is the library proper, and one side is the business center and the auditorium,” she said, noting the latter will seat around 150 people – up from the current 40-person capacity community room. “Here in Republic, there’s just not really any place that has free meeting room space.”

The outdoor patio will be a new addition for the Republic branch, which Shay said isn’t currently available at any of the Library District’s 10 branches.

“Our branch really focuses on nature literacy and getting folks outside and connecting them back out to nature. So having a patio was pretty important to us,” she said, adding the children’s area will connect to the patio with plans to extend library programming outside.

Nabholz Construction Corp. is serving as general contractor for the project designed by Paragon Architecture LLC. The Library District purchased the roughly 5-acre property in 2023 from Shelly Moore for $1.35 million, according to Vickie Hicks, community relations director.

Piling projects
The new branch is one of three major projects in motion for the Library District. It broke ground in September on Hatch Auditorium, a roughly $7.7 million project at the Library Center, 4653 S. Campbell Ave. Branco Enterprises Inc. is the construction manager at risk for the 9,340-square-foot auditorium designed by Sapp Design Associates Architects Inc., according to past Springfield Business Journal reporting.

Hatch Auditorium is planned with 500 seats at the west end of the Library Center. The Library Center currently has 13 meeting spaces, with the largest room fitting 100 people, library officials say. The Hatch Foundation contributed $600,000 as a naming-level donation to the auditorium project, with $200,000 coming from Friends of the Library. An early 2026 opening is expected.

Over $4.4 million in renovation work is underway at the Midtown Carnegie Branch, which temporarily closed in May 2024. The 397 E. Central St. library is undergoing renovations and upgrades that will, in part, provide a new library entrance, designed to offer accessible pathways to each floor of the library, including access to the elevator that will be restored. Additionally, the building’s heating, ventilation and air conditioning system will be replaced and modernized to provide energy-efficient cooling and heating, according to past SBJ reporting.

“The HVAC system that was put in was retrofit from another building that we had, and it was not rightsized and so it never really operated well and never kept the building cool in the summer and warm in the winter,” said Library District Executive Director Edward Walton. “It was extremely hot or extremely cold.”

Crossland Construction Co. Inc. is serving as general contractor for the project designed by Dake Wells Architecture Inc. Walton said a grand reopening for the Midtown Carnegie Branch should be in late March or early April.

Library district officials say $10.5 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds secured in 2022 is helping finance the projects. Around $5 million is going toward the Republic branch, $4 million for the Library Center and $1.5 million for Midtown.

Fundraising focus
The Library District also continues to seek donated funds for the trio of projects. Part of that work is connected to the director of institutional advancement, a newly reworked role for the Library District. Bridget Dierks began Jan. 2 in the position, which officials say is essentially the Library District’s chief development officer, with duties including management of the Foundation Center, donor development, grant writing and foundation funding processes.

Dierks, who worked the past 18 years at Community Foundation of the Ozarks Inc., most recently as vice president of community impact, said she’s excited to build the Library Foundation into something “very exceptional.”

“There are plenty of opportunities to turn it into something that can really robustly and meaningfully support the library into the future,” she said of the Library Foundation, which is a 501(c)(3) with its own board of directors.

Created in 1993, the Library Foundation facilitates fundraising efforts for high-profile projects for the Library District, such as the Library Center and the Schweitzer Brentwood Branch Library capital campaign. It’s separate from Friends of the Library, an all-volunteer organization that has raised over $5 million for the Library District over the past 25 years, officials say.

“Whenever I came on board as executive director, one of the things that the board wanted me to be working on was to increase our partnership with our community and to increase our profile in the fundraising arena,” Walton said. “We were really looking for somebody who manages an overall development program for us.”

Walton said Dierks brings a long history of activity in the Springfield community’s philanthropic arena.

“Having a long time at the Community Foundation of the Ozarks gave her a lot of expertise, a lot of connections within the community, a significant development knowledge and skills and the ability to come in and develop a program for us that really did not exist, and we needed it to exist,” he said.

In addition to the ARPA funding, Walton said the Library Center project has received $817,000 in gifts and donations, followed by $450,000 for the Midtown Carnegie Branch. The newly launched Republic branch project has received $4,200 to date.

In Republic, Shay said she gets to watch the progress of the future library every day at work.

“We’ve been talking about it since early ’21, so it’s been a long time coming,” she said. “When they first started clearing the field and we saw all the big equipment and things like that, it was pretty emotional just thinking like, ‘Oh, this is finally here. This is really happening.’”