If you live in the Vail area and want some input on whether your brand-new local library should have a 3D printer or community garden, now's the time.
The Southeast Library at Esmond Station Regional Park, on Mary Ann Cleveland Way east of Houghton Road, will serve the Vail community when it opens in 2020. If you live in that area, you can fill out a survey to share what features you think this new library needs by Friday, Aug. 10 — take the survey here. It will just take a few minutes.
The survey covers everything from furniture (bean bags or booths) to programming (do you want coding? yoga? career skills?)
"For us, it's super important to get input from the community," says Holly Schaffer, the community relations manager for the Pima County Public Library. "This library is something that has been needed for a while."
This is the preliminary plan for the landscaping, which includes train motifs to represent the area's history. The larger park includes the site of Esmond Station on the old Southern Pacific railroad main line.
Schaffer said currently the community's nearest library is the Miller-Golf Links Library, 9640 E. Golf Links Road. Funded by the library system's operations budget, construction on the new branch will begin at the end of this year or in 2019 with an opening planned for 2020. The total cost is $4.5 million, Schaffer says.
Artists can also leave their mark on the 9,000-square-foot library by submitting a proposal through the Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona by Thursday, Aug. 2. That budget will be $22,500.
The public art project will be a statement piece and should complement the building's design and reflect both the mission of the library and the history and culture of the area. The project architects are BWS Architects.
For more information about the public art project, go here.
