Expansion of Frisco Public Library gets voter approval

Abby Wang, Guest Contributor|May 9, 2019

Perry Mellone

Property owners in the Frisco ISD taxing district are set to see the lowest property tax rate in decades. The reduction comes two months after state education funding was reformed by the Texas Legislature.

The Frisco Public Library located in Frisco City Hall is going to have a new home in the near future after voters approved a $62 million bond to expand the library. Operating at full capacity at its current location, the library will eventually be moved to the Beal Building which sits less than a mile south of City Hall.

“This is a major design and construction project,” Frisco Public Library Director Shelley Holley said via email. “We are in the early design stages now and believe the new library could open as soon as late 2023 or early 2024. The business that is in the building was given notice this spring and has 2 years to vacate.”

The new location will provide double the amount of space, something school librarian Chelsea Hamilton is familiar with after overseeing renovations of the school’s library.

“It’s always fun to go to a new space and get to figure out what kinds of new things you can do in the space,” Hamilton said. “The new location is going to give them more room to spread out and add cool new things and more areas for childrens, teen and adult activities. I think that it’s going to take a lot of behind the scenes planning. I know they have a very large and very competent and exceptional staff there. So they’re going to figure out how to do it with the most limited amount of disruptions possible.”

Regular visitors to the public library often find themselves struggling to find space to read or even park. According to a Community Impact article, the library had 651,002 visits in 2018, which is three times more than the number of people who live in Frisco.

“We’ve tried to study there and it was really crowded except for the top floor,” sophomore Lexi Hanlon said. “We would try to get a study room so we could talk and sometimes we could get one but sometimes they were all used.”

The library looks to use the transition as a time to make a technology jump with digital resources such as books and classes.

“We expect 1/3 of our collections to be digital (eBooks and audios),” Holley said via email. “Frisco’s library has been forward looking in offering digital services and training in digital technology. We also will expand our focus on hands-on learning. Therefore ore we plan to include an expanded version of the Ready to Read Railroad for kids ages 0-5; we want to create a Discovery Area that is focused on experiments and learning activities for elementary aged children; examples might include: an robotics area, full-sized dinosaur skeleton, live green screen, physics experiment space, etc.”

Instead of constructing an entirely new building, the library will move into the existing Beal Building, five minutes south of the library’s current location, saving time and money.

“Frisco residents consume library services at a higher rate than residents in neighboring cities,” Holley said via email. “Our current library is simply too small for the city today, let alone going into the future. We also wanted a space that would allow possible expansion in the future if it was wanted and needed. Converting the former Beal Aerospace Factory into a library offered the lowest price and the largest number of square feet. Not all existing buildings are built to the needed tolerances. The Beal location seemed to be the best fit. In addition it will be on the edge of grand park and next to other cultural and educational attractions (Video Game Museum, Sci-Tech, Traintopia etc.”