City Ok's Adriatica Library

The city council Tuesday night took a step toward putting a library facility in the heart of the Adriatica development in Stonebridge Ranch.

The council approved a small expenditure from the city’s general fund to pay for the design of facilities that would be housed within one of the mixed-use structures in Adriatica’s planned harbor district.

Also Tuesday…
The council approved zoning for the Bridge Street Towne Center on the northeast corner of U.S. 75 and State Highway 121, finally working a thorny issue excluding large home improvement centers like Lowes and Home Depot. The library would be a limited-use facility set up in addition to a full-service library planned for Gabe Nesbitt Park at the corner of Eldorado Parkway and Alma Road. That library will be the first on McKinney’s rapidly developing west side.

According to McKinney spokesman Steve Hill, the Adriatica library will feature popular collections and Internet access, but will lack some common features such as juvenile literature or a children’s section. The idea, which has been termed a “village library,” is meant as a reading room of sorts with access to popular literature and other resources as driven by demand.

"One of McKinney’s appealing traits is its small town charm – a concept like this fits in nicely with that," Hill said.

The full concept, as well as the library’s design, is still developing. And, Hill said, even after the facility opens, the library’s usage will be monitored and its holdings will be adjusted accordingly.

He emphasized that Adriatica’s library will not be funded by bond money, but out of the city’s general fund. He also said that it will compliment, and not replace, plans for the traditional full-service library at Nesbitt Park.

Because of its location within a dense mixed-use development, the idea of an Adriatica library was passed over the first time. The city considered the site when deciding where to build the first west-side library, but the nature of the development in Adriatica made it impossible to meet the normal requirements for the development of a full-service library, which would occupy a large footprint in a dense area.

But according to Brian Loughmiller, councilman for the district that includes the Stonebridge Ranch area, demand from residents for a library intersected with interest from Adriatica developer Jeff Blackard.

“We were getting a lot of e-mails,” he said. “A lot of people thought that this would be a great site for a library.”

And the resulting compromise pleased both parties. The facility will be built by Blackard and leased to the city. Loughmiller said that Blackard is pleased that his flexibility in development isn’t hindered, and the city is pleased to try an experiment at a much-reduced cost.

“Long-term, this will be a good way to get a barometer on how people use the library. In that way, the lease makes sense, too, because if it doesn’t work out, we haven’t really lost anything.”

He said that if successful, the model might be duplicated elsewhere in the city to provide library services at a lower cost to tax payers.

Because the facility is still in planning stages, no timeline is available for the construction and opening of the library.