Vestavia council moves forward 1 step toward eastside library

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The Vestavia Hills City Council last week voted 4-1 to hire the Williams Blackstock Architects firm for the first phase of a three-phase study regarding the need for a library/community resource center at the Sicard Hollow Athletic Complex.

The first phase, which is a feasibility study, will cost up to $7,500. The council next can determine whether to proceed with the second phase that would include a review of potential programming and a conceptual design, at a cost of about $50,000. And then, if the council still agrees to move forward, it could consider do a third phase for about $7,500 that includes a campaign document that spells out the plan for fundraising purposes.

But there still is some debate about whether the city needs a $9 million library facility on the eastern side of town.

The previous City Council had preliminary plans for a 12,000-square-foot library facility at the Sicard Hollow Athletic Complex. The projected cost is $9 million, with at least $2 million of that coming through outside fundraising.

But New Councilwoman Ali Pilcher has questioned whether that’s the most important need in the city right now.

“When we campaigned, you heard a lot of people talking about stormwater drainage. You heard a lot of people talking about girls sports facilities,” Pilcher said.

People have touted a Liberty Park library as something that people in Cahaba Heights would use, too, but the current Library in the Forest actually is closer to Cahaba Heights than the proposed site for a new library facility at Sicard Hollow, Pilcher said. She questioned spending that much money on a library facility that is only going to benefit one community.

She also said there’s a lot of unleased commercial space in Liberty Park and asked if it would be better to lease some of that space than build a new facility.

She thinks it’s worth asking people more directly where their priorities are, she said.

“I think we need to ask a lot more questions — very basic questions,” Pilcher said. “I kind of feel like we’re rushing into a vote – to see if this is actually a facility that we would want. I think we are called to be good financial stewards of public funds, and I just have questions as to whether a possibly $9 million library in one community is a good public use of that funds.”

April Jackson-Maclennan, president of the Vestavia Hills Library in the Forest board of trustees, told the City Council that Cahaba Heights and Liberty Park fall outside of a reasonable 15-minute drive to the Library in the Forest along U.S. 31, particularly during peak traffic hours.

“That distance functions as a real access barrier,” Jackson-Maclennan said

Vestavia Hills is twice the size of Homewood and almost twice the size of Mountain Brook and has a need for another facility, she said.

The Vestavia Hills Library in the Forest in fiscal 2025 had 855 programs with 20,737 attendees, Jackson-Maclennan said. But the library also had 16 outreach programs in Cahaba Heights and Liberty Park that together drew 3,325 attendees, she said. That represents 17% of total program participants but with only 2% of the library’s total funding, she said.

“A very small share of the programming produced a high level of participation from those two key sectors of Vestavia Hills,” Jackson-Maclennan said. “This indicates demand, not a lack of interest. This data shows that residents in this area are participating at very high rates.”

Susan Swagler, another member of the library’s board of trustees, said a modern library is a lot more than just books.

“It’s a place for community engagement. It’s a space for meeting and working and relaxing and connecting and learning and creating,” Swagler said. “It’s a space of community in every sense of the word, and it offers way, way more than books. It’s what urban sociologists call a third space.”

 The first space is a person’s home, and the second space is their place of employment, but a third space is kind of neutral ground, Swagler said.

“It’s a place where people can come together and learn and interact and  have conversations, and our library is that third space. It’s an important part of any community,” she said.

Swagler noted all the different kinds of activities in which she has participated at the library in the past year. She checked out dozens of books, rented the community room, took Excel, Canva and writing classes, enjoyed documentaries and concerts, did crafts, and had her photo taken in photo studio at the library, she said.

“The fastest growing part of our city is the east side, and it has wanted a library of its own for so long, for decades,” Swager said. “I think that a modern library with books and programming and meeting places and outdoor spaces, a place for people of all ages to get together to learn and explore and grow and access information is what they need. I really do. A modern library, a community third space, offers all of this and more. Y’all know the east side is growing quickly, and their needs for community will grow as well. I think it’s time we met those needs in the very best and most comprehensive way we can, and that is with their own modern library that will serve their needs.”

Emily Lawrence, vice president of the Vestavia Hills Library Foundation and a resident of Liberty Park, said there are wonderful sports facilities on the east side of Vestavia Hills but no indoor public spaces or public library spaces. The school system has great libraries and librarians in Liberty Park and Cahaba Heights, but those libraries are open only during school hours and close down in the summer, she said.

The proposed public library at Sicard Hollow would be open yearround and serve all age groups, Lawrence said.

Mayor Ashley Curry in a previous meeting said he believes everyone agrees that there is a need for community meeting spaces for people on the east side of town, and he believes a little further study could help better determine the proper types of spaces to include in whatever building is built in that part of town.

Councilwoman Kimberly Cook said the city made a commitment when it changed the plan for Liberty Park to include apartments and higher-density commercial space to provide the proper infrastructure to handle the increased population. That meant not just paving and stormwater, but library services and ball fields, Cook said.

“This is where the residential growth is happening,” she said. “It’s not because (fellow Councilman) Rusty (Weaver) and I live there. It’s because that’s where the growth is happening. … We have to provide them services to keep the quality of life what it should be for every resident of our city. We want that throughout our city.”

Residents of Liberty Park have complained that the current library is too far, and they are looking for more options than just digital books, Cook said.

“I do see this as a really important priority,” she said.

When the Starbucks closed in Liberty Park, you would have thought it was a tragedy not just because of the loss of a coffee shop but because so many people used the Starbucks as a meeting space for various clubs and groups, Cook said. People need community spaces, she said.

Curry, who lives on the far western side of the city, said surveys have clearly shown a need for library services and community meeting spaces in eastern Vestavia, and he thinks a new facility could serve both purposes.

The 1,200 new single-family homes coming to Liberty Park could generate 4,000 to 5,000 more residents, and if there’s a remote chance that another community building and event space is going to be needed, that’s the logical place to put it, he said. Also, he’s not aware of any park and recreation programs or projects that would not take place if a library/community resource center is built, he said.

“We have the beauty in our city of being financially sound,” Curry said. “We can do both.”

City Manager Jeff Downes said that a previous financial review determined that the city could handle $34.5 million worth of debt for projects in the Sicard Hollow area and stay within the city’s financial policy guidelines regarding debt. That included $14.7 million for a police operations building, $9.9 million for Liberty Park ballfield upgrades and contingencies, $7 million in city money for a library, $1.75 million for a maintenance facility, and $1.17 million for the realignment of the entrance to the Liberty Park baseball/softball complex on Sicard Hollow Road.

Borrowing $34.5 million likely would add $1.5 million to the city’s annual debt service, Downes said.

And because the city’s commitment to provide $1.2 million a year to the school system for capital projects ends this August, most of that extra money for debt service could come from money that had been dedicated to the schools for three years, making the $1.5 million in extra debt service much more palatable, Downes said.

The Fitch rating agency also took the potential increased debt into account when it recently affirmed the city’s AAA bond rating, he said.

Downes also noted that previous surveys done by the city determined that 90% of residents citywide had a positive feeling about the quality of library services in the city, but only 60 to 70% of resident in Liberty Park and Cahaba Heights felt positive about library services.

Sixty to 70% of the residents surveyed in Liberty Park and 70 to 90% of residents in Cahaba Heights rated the expansion of library services as a priority, Downes said.

OTHER PROJECTS

The City Council also has agreed to pay CMH Architects $873,845 to design a new 25,000-square-foot police operations building at the Sicard Hollow Athletic Complex and $111,896 to design a 4,800-square-foot maintenance building at the complex as well.

Plans also are being drawn up for an addition and renovation of Fire Station No. 4 in Liberty Park. Depending on whether the council chooses to add another vehicle bay, the expansion would boost square footage from 7,500 square feet to either 13,990 square feet or 15,047, according to preliminary drawings. The projected cost is $5.7 million, and construction is expected to start in April and take about a year to complete.