Roselle library will try again for a tax increase to replace building

The Roselle Public Library District will ask voters in November to approve a $22 million borrowing plan for a new building more than a year after its original request failed at the ballot box by just 22 votes.

This time, the district is seeking to build a new library campus on the site of the former Trinity Community Center — a property currently owned by the village. The library and the village would swap their respective parcels if voters say “yes” to the project.

“I hope that people can see that we listened … our priority was to listen and make sure we were designing something for the future that the community really, really wants and can believe in,” said Samantha Johnson, the library’s executive director. “And the village has been so supportive.”

Library leaders went back to the drawing board and held focus groups after voters in April 2023 narrowly rejected a plan to replace their existing facility with a two-story, glass-wrapped building on the same Park Street site.

The new plan would relocate the library to Maple Avenue. With voter approval, the district would issue bonds to pay for construction of a roughly 32,000-square-foot building. As a result, an owner of a home valued at $300,000 would pay an anticipated $179 in additional property taxes to the library district annually.

“It’s a really nice piece of property, and we’re able to have a lot more green space as well in our master plan,” Johnson said of the village-owned site, which is connected to Pine Park.

Roselle trustees approved an intergovernmental agreement earlier this week that’s contingent upon a successful library referendum effort. Library trustees are set to follow suit with a vote on the agreement Wednesday night.

Under the terms, the village would be responsible for the costs of demolition and site preparation up to $450,000. The municipality would convey its parcel to the library after the work is complete.

The library then would turn over its building and property to the village after moving into the new facility.

“When we purchased the property at East Maple Avenue, we knew that it had a lot of potential to go back on the rolls,” Roselle Mayor David Pileski said. “However, with it being adjacent to so much residential, we knew there might be some issues and concerns in the neighborhood.

“As we started to have some conversations about development plans … it became really clear that the residents in that immediate vicinity were hoping that it would continue to remain kind of an institutional type use,” Pileski added.

The existing library property, by contrast, is “much more conducive for dense development,” Pileski said. The municipal center is to the west.

“This is a win-win situation where we're able to help the library district use their funds and their revenue more conservatively to deliver a great asset to the community for generations to come,” the mayor said. “And we can put the village in a position to really leverage its assets to maximize private investment in things that will provide us more vitality for the future to come.”

The new library would have a drive-up window, attached parking and a larger youth services department.

“We heard a lot from people who loved what was inside, but they didn’t like the outside,” Johnson said. The exterior design now calls for more brick, warmer colors and “less glass, definitely less glass,” she said.

The property swap also would allow the library to continue operating out of its Park Street building during construction.