CRESTON — On Friday, March 15, a groundbreaking ceremony was held for the new Creston-Dement Public Library project at the corner of Main and Cederholm Streets. Board members, library employees and members of the community took part in the event. 

A referendum passed in June 2022 that allowed the Creston-Dement Public Library District to issue $2.2 million in bonds to build a new library building on the land that was donated years ago for just that purpose. The main reason for the desire for a new building is the library outgrowing its current space at 107 S. Main St.

“This has been a seven-year project to get up to this point,” Library Board President Doug Kroupa said. “We did community surveys and had experts come in to show us the difference between wants and real needs to create the building the way we need it to be. We'll see a lot of community involvement. The growth in the library and the people who are interested in this will help the town and community. It's going to be a great thing.”

The library project recently underwent a redesign due to an unexpected $800,000 funding gap due to not receiving a state grant and higher-than-anticipated building costs. 

The redesigned plans made the project about a third smaller. The redesign caused about a year-long delay. 

“We shrank the building width-wise, but all the major things are still in the building,” Kroupa said. “We twisted the activity room so it now fits in. As the building could grow in the future, expansion could be easily incorporated into the design without a whole bunch of restructuring. We've been very conscious about how we're spending people's money. We spend it as if it was our own money. We were frugal in the way we deployed the money and in the design we still have a kids area and adult area. We did lose the study rooms in the redesign, but we have the activity room that can be turned into study rooms as the need grows. We can cover almost everything we need right off the bat.”

Construction was scheduled to start during the week of March 17-23 and will take place weather permitting from there on out. Kroupa said the first steps will be leveling ground, soil boring, bringing in gravel and pouring a foundation. The board hopes for a fall 2025 opening. 

Kroupa called community support for the project “amazing” and said the new library will allow his organization to better meet needs of the village’s residents. 

“We're here to make sure we meet the community's needs and gather information and share it quickly and easily to everyone,” Kroupa said. “Even through COVID-19, the library continued to provide entertainment and education. We had online viewings and continued to offer services. Now that we'll have a facility that's large enough and fully handicapped accessible, we'll see growth of that type of education even more.”

Growth in services and community offerings and demand from district residents has been seen in recent years which further showed the need for a new library, Kroupa said. He cited the library’s Christmas in Creston event each year and said it has grown from 40-50 people at its start to almost 200 last year. 

“Constantly, people are encouraging us to continue to grow,” Kroupa said. “This means a lot to the community. The library isn't just about books and stuff like that. We bring people together in many different ways to share their knowledge and education. That community growth is spreading as we go. We bring everybody together to keep the community growing strong and it just keeps going and going.”

For board members and library staff, “hundreds and hundreds of hours” of work have gone into the new library project up to this point, Kroupa said. The board has also navigated supply chain issues that have taken place in the construction industry since the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“It's going through research, finding experts, talking to community members, and balancing the wants and the needs,” Kroupa said. “Making sure we focus on what we need to do is really the important thing. It will be a great relief when it's finally done. When we were going through planning with the bonding people, we saw wood triple in price and steel and wiring more than quadrupled. Some things went up almost 10 times what they were to begin with. To manage that so we could get this in a timely fashion and watch the prices come back down so it's an affordable facility, that was the important thing.”