Photo by Lester Smith
On a sunny afternoon, the shadow pattern that architect Warren Platner loved on the library’s white walls sprawls awkwardly down the dry turf of the northeast lawn.
Progress on a program to mitigate the PCB air contamination that has held up the reopening of the Kent Memorial Library was put on hold pending the successful completion of ventilation air balance tests. The current lack of balance has motivated explorations that revealed debris in some of the ducts and, most surprisingly, what seemed to be several previously unknown dampers.
With the library project contingency budget essentially depleted, First Selectman Melissa Mack has reported that she intends to ask for “third party” funding for the expected, but not yet defined, PCB remediation effort.
In the meantime, a new plan for Suffield’s library services has been revealed. In the Selectmen’s regular meeting on August 17, Mrs. Mack surprised many in the large audience with the announcement that the library must move to a new temporary location. In October or November, the operation will leave the temporary quarters already occupied on Ffyler Place for almost two years.
The new temporary location will be the Suffield Senior Center, where the library is to occupy the game room. (Senior Center Director Paula Pascoe advised that a pool table will be moved to the conference room.) The library will also share the computer room in the center wing and will use other spaces on occasion, such as showing movies in the big Yoga room (the old main sanctuary of Calvary Church).
The library’s new dedicated space will be about two-thirds the size of the present location on Ffyler Place – about the same as what was allocated in Town Hall five years ago when the library roof was repaired. That temporary location lasted only eight months.
To many comments and questions from other selectmen and the audience, Mack explained that the Ffyler Place location was the only spot available that would accommodate the town clerk, voting registrars, tax collector, and assessor, who must all remain together when they evacuate the Town Hall for its upcoming renovation and must be provided, by statute, with certain building security features.