Can residents in this growing Raleigh neighborhood hold on to their library?
Sri Lankipalli moved to Raleigh in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
She and her husband came from Michigan to the west Raleigh area partly because it’s close to Lake Johnson, the State Farmers Market and the Athens Drive Community Library.
Searching for friends and a sense of community, she brought her daughter to the library for story time.
“If this library wasn’t here, I don’t know how else or where else I would have met the people that I did,” she said.
The fear of the library leaving their neighborhood drove dozens of people to meet with Wake County library leaders last week seeking answers.
Athens Drive
The community library is housed in Athens Drive High School, the only one of the more than 20 Wake County Public Library locations inside a school.
Security concerns about members of the public being on school property and an upcoming school renovation have the county looking for a new library location.
Athens Drive is one of the construction projects included in the $143 million library bond that voters passed last November. Other projects include:
- $67.1 million for new libraries including in Rolesville, the Friendship area of Apex and a third library in a location to be determined. Those funds also include replacing the Athens Drive and Wendell community libraries.
- $12.3 million to expand the Fuquay-Varina library
- $43.3 million to renovate the Fayetteville, Green Road, Leesville, Northwest, Richard B. Harrison, Southeast and Zebulon libraries and the library administration building.
Community fight
Where their new library will go is what concerns some Athens Dive community members who say this isn’t the first time they’ve had to fight for their library.
Hannah McKenzie spoke to county leaders a decade ago urging them not to close the library. She is part of the Friends of the Athens Drive Library, which organized last week’s community meeting.
“It’s super convenient, and it’s part of why we stay here,” she said. “My husband works in Durham, and every time we looked at houses, I was like, ‘I can’t walk to a library from this house or that house?’ Why would we move? Because we have these amenities here that we can’t get anywhere else.”
The county is searching for a new site, and the Friends say they want reassurances that it will remain in a walkable location. If the county needs four or five acres, they fear the library will move out of the neighborhood onto a major road or closer to Cary.
The county should consider a denser, compact library that would require less land, said Yevonne Brannon, a former county commissioner who has advocated for the library.
“Do we deserve to have amenities in our area?” she said. “Are all amenities supposed to be us chasing growth down the road and building EMS, a library and a school? How about inside the Beltline, where we’ve had to live, and now they’re tearing us down and building up. Don’t we deserve a library and a park and a community center? We are being asked to suck up the density.”
A city partner?
The county has to consider zoning, stormwater and parking needs when planning for a county building like a library, said Katrina Vernon, Wake County Public Library’s assistant director. The acreage could be smaller if the county can partner with another entity, like the city of Raleigh. Raleigh owns land near the library.
Raleigh City Council member Jane Harrison, who represents southwest Raleigh, attended the community meeting and read part of a letter the city intends to send to the county.
“We emphasize the need for the Athens Drive library to remain in Raleigh and be accessible to our residents,” she read from the letter. “Our city manager has worked to identify opportunities for city owned land for the replacement of Athens Drive library. We recognize these options may or may not be feasible. Thus, we also ask that private property be considered for purchase. We also ask that you consider an urban footprint of smaller acreage to ensure a neighborhood location can be identified. We commit to partnership to keep the library accessible to our residents.”
