Wake County could move Athens Drive library to Cary. Locals hope it won’t.
A southwest Raleigh library needs to move, and people who use it are concerned it could go to Cary.
The Wake County Board of Commissioners will discuss the Athens Drive Community Library’ at a work session at 12:30 p.m. Monday in the commissioners’ chambers at the Wake County Justice Center on South McDowell Street in Raleigh.
Why does the library need to move?
The Athens Drive Library is the only Wake County public library, out of more than 20, inside a school.
The county is looking for a new location for multiple reasons:
- Keeping the library at Athens Drive Magnet High School would cost tens of millions and take away money from other library projects, according to Deputy Wake County Manager Ashley Jacobs
- Security concerns about people being on school property
- Upcoming school renovations
- People feel less comfortable visiting the location at a school leading to fewer users, according to Wake County Community Services Director Frank Cope
What are the options?
In March, the commissioners directed county officials to negotiate a price for a 2.6-acre piece of land about a quarter mile north of the library’s current location for a replacement library.
The owner of the property, called the Well Fed Community Garden locally, originally asked for about $1.8 million.
The county's assessed value of the property is $1.2 million.
After negotiating, the county managed to get the price down to just under $1.6 million.
According to a presentation Jacobs prepared for Monday’s meeting, the Well Fed Community Garden property is small, making it difficult and expensive to develop.
It would be a two-story library with no room for future expansion.
A site in Cary more than two miles southwest of the current library, at 5417 Tryon Road has about 12 acres owned by Wake County Public Schools and is considered surplus land.
Wake County hasn’t figured out what a potential acquisition of the land from the school system would take, but a land swap is potentially in the cards, according to Jacobs’ presentation.
But the site “easily accommodates future expansion and/or other uses such as affordable housing” the presentation says.
Why locals want the library to stay
Raleigh City Council member Jane Harrison, who represents southwest Raleigh, has spoken against the library moving to Cary, which she said would serve a wealthier, whiter population.
The U.S. Census tract with the Cary site has a higher population — 4,600 to the Athens Drive area’s 4,000. A census tract is a small division of land that the U.S. Census Bureau tracks population statistics within.
The Athens Drive area has roughly an 18% poverty rate to the Cary area’s roughly 3%, however. And the median household income in that part of Cary, at almost $180,000, is nearly double what it is around Athens Drive.
And while bus routes run very close to the proposed Cary location, the site is farther from a bus stop, Harrison said.
“It is almost a half-mile walk to the bus stop on Jones Franklin Road which only connects the site to Cary, not the Raleigh community that Athens Drive Community Library currently serves,” Harrison wrote in an email to The News & Observer. “It requires walking across 6-8 lanes of traffic on a busy road to get to the nearest bus stop. It is not walkable to neighborhoods. While there may be a sidewalk, this is not a safe nor enjoyable area for pedestrians.”
Hannah McKenzie lives on Athens Drive and goes to the library at least once a week with her two sons. She said she hoped her sons, at 13 years old and 9 years, would be able to walk to their local library.
“Moving it three miles away would not be a replacement,” McKenzie said. “It would be an entirely new library.”
For her and others in the area, the library is more than just a building. It’s a community space. She said that professors, graduate students from North Carolina State University, and people in the immigrant community use the library.
“The community clearly wants it here,” she said.
Dynestie Robinson, who also lives nearby, said that she used the library growing up.
For her, it was a place of respite from domestic violence at her home, she said.
She’s now a social worker, and she says that the library provides a place of respite for the entire community.
But Robinson said she doesn’t drive.
“I would not go to that Cary location,” she said.
