Library breaks ground on $6.5 million expansion

The groundbreaking for a$6.5 million expansion was held for the Wimberley Village Library last week and fundraising continues for an additional renovation project.

“This is like really adding on tremendously, we’re doubling our footprint,” Carolyn Manning, director of the Wimberley Village Library, said. “And so we’re really going to be able to do so many different things… We already provide teen programs. We’re gonna do more of those. We already provide youth programs, and we’ll be able to expand that. We have a craft and adult crafting librarian who is going to be able to give us way more classes than we can right now, because we just don’t have the space. And then of course, more adult programs, just anybody that wants to come.”

The expansion will add around 8,500 square feet of space to the library in an attempt to keep up with a burgeoning community.

“Wimberley is growing,” Manning said. “It’s grown so much just since I’ve been here, and we’ve just wanted to meet the needs of the community. You know, we love our little library and for a small library, I feel like we’re very mighty. We can do a lot of things, but with the expansion, we’ll be able to do so much more.”

Around 100 people attended the groundbreaking, which was held just a few feet away from the original groundbreaking ceremony in November of 1978.

“I always like to read to remember the history of this library. 45 years ago, about 200 feet from where we are standing, was the first groundbreaking ceremony for that building,” Dell Hood, with the Wimberley Village Library Foundation, said. “There were maybe a dozen people who attended that groundbreaking. It took them a year and a half to actually do the building. And when it was dedicated in November of 1978. That was a major occasion in Wimberley. That was the opening of the building you see behind you, but just the core of that building. In the years since then, there have been four additions to this building, to give us what we have now.”

The process wasn’t easy. Beyond raising the necessary funds, there were other factors that impacted the expansion project that began in earnest years ago with the purchase of the neighboring property.

“We started six years ago, when we bought the property that made this expansion possible,” Hood said. “In these six years, we have had an incredibly enjoyable, sometimes frustrating, planning process where we sought ideas from you, from the patrons, from as many sources as we could to understand what it is Wimberley wants in their new library. We believe that the design that is being built here will satisfy many, if not all, of those ideas and visions and suggestions.”

Since then, COVID-19, inflation and supply chain issues have made it difficult to bring the project to fruition. In the process, a planned renovation of the current library space had to be temporarily put on hold due to cost increases. However, the library is currently raising funds to try and complete that portion of the project now also.

Even without the renovations, the current expansion will be stunning.

“The nice thing about this building is it’s got a lot of architectural elements that tie it all together,” Mark Baublit, president of Marksmen General Contractors, said. “…The main thing is their ability to connect the history to the new modern feel, but also tie it into the community and how it feels with all these trees. It’s so beautiful out here. You like stone and like the earth tones that are important, and they captured a lot of that on the interior and with some of the beautiful wooden finishes to the outside. It is really well done on their part. There is lots of light, so that’s important to capture from the outside.”

In the end, the expansion will allow the library to complete the transition from the quiet nook to read a book into a modern library that caters to the needs of its community.

“There is a big public space that is available for all the different groups in Wimberley,” Bob Farmer, Program Manager with AGCM, said. “I think that’s going to be really used a lot. It’s got modern amenities. It’s a modern library, which is different from the old fashioned library. So there’s a lot of flexibility in the design, flexing how the space is used. Furniture moves around. So it’s a really flexible, very modern, inviting space. I think the community will like being here.”

To help the library reach the finish line on the funds needed for the renovations, visit wimberleylibrary.org.