Still waiting in Camden for a new library

Buzzy Bohn is ticked off.

Back in January 2008, Hennepin County commissioners went to her north Minneapolis neighborhood with plans for a new Webber Park library that would double the size of the current facility. The new building might even be ready for the library's centennial in 2010, they said.

But issues with assembling the site have pushed Webber Park farther back in a long line of county libraries -- Plymouth, Maple Grove, Northeast and Nokomis among them -- that have been opened, renovated or planned in the meantime.

Webber Park "should have opened by now," said Bohn, a librarian at nearby Loring Community School. "I want the new library before the county decides they could use that money for something in the suburbs."

Bohn represents growing frustration among Camden neighborhood residents about the lack of progress, despite assurances from Commissioners Mark Stenglein and Mike Opat that the county remains committed to the new library there.

Stenglein said last week that the project has been delayed because the commissioners want the library built on a "first-rate" parkway site that includes a house whose owners have refused to sell.

But many neighbors said the library could just as well be built in an adjacent county-owned lot that contains a vacant Kowalski's grocery -- property that the county now is trying to sell or have leased.

Stenglein said that the county's 2011 capital plan will include $12 million earmarked for the Webber library. The original budget was $15 million, but that was slashed along with other library projects amid capital budget cuts last year.

'A showcase library'

The first Webber Park library opened in 1910 on the second floor of a fieldhouse. That was followed by the current facility, a 4,100-square-foot building opened in 1980 in the heart of Webber Park.

The library was closed during all of 2007, when the Minneapolis library system dealt with budget troubles of its own, but reopened with reduced hours after the city and county systems merged. It was visited nearly 24,000 times last year.

"This facility is very well used, and we have a lot of positive comments about being here," said Ellen Buskirk, Webber Park's librarian. "The neighborhood is very positive toward us."

In December 2008, the county bought the Kowalski's property on 44th Avenue and two lots on 45th Avenue, which at that point ends in a cul-de-sac paralleling Victory Memorial Drive.

But the county was unable to buy the entire site. Owners of a house and commercial building who live elsewhere and had previously put the property up for sale said they eventually planned to live and run a business there and declined to sell.

"The house was for sale until we started looking at it," Stenglein said.

The owners, who rent out the house, could not be reached for comment. One of them recently proposed, in a letter to the Camden paper, that the county convert the Kowalski's store into a library.

After the County Board decided not to pursue the property through eminent domain, the library project ground to a halt. That's where things stand, as county officials wait for the property issues to be settled.

"The county is hopeful that we can come to an agreement to build a beautiful showcase library for north Minneapolis," he said.