Flagler Library’s ‘Nexus Center’ Breaks Ground with a Shovelful of History and Images of a Future Page-Turner

When ancient Hindus called libraries “Treasure-houses of the Goddess of Speech,” they could have been anticipating Holly Albanese and the speech she’s been waiting 19 years to deliver, as she did today at the groundbreaking of the future “Nexus Center” library in Bunnell, across the street from the Sheriff’s Operations Center.

Albanese started with an apology: she was going to speak for a while. But she said she’d earned at least a minute for every one of the years the project has been in the planning stage.




Albanese is Flagler County’s library director and assistant administrator without whose perseverance over those years the $16 million southern branch library would not have happened. It is “her determination and grit and seeing this through to this point, and securing the grants, that really have made the project a reality,” County Commission Chair Andy Dance said.

Bunnell had its own branch until the county kicked it out of that space to give it to SMA’s Access Center for mental health, when the SMA facility also forced the unfortunate closure of Sally’s Safe Haven, which for a brief few years had been the county’s only location for supervised parental visits and exchanges of children in the middle of custody issues. The Bunnell branch was relegated to a couple of storefronts at Marvin’s Garden, the strip mall at the edge of Palm Coast, while it waited for its more permanent south branch.

It took a great deal of cobbling of dollars, including $1.1 million of the $1.4 million the passport program Albanese started years ago, a $500,000 state grant that took seven tries to secure (not because Flagler County wasn’t rated first for it: it was, but the state was either not funding the program or the governor was vetoing it), and a key $4 million federal grant tied to broadband access, plus local general fund dollars. All that money is now in hand.




Helping the project’s viability as a grant magnet is its “nexus” concept. It will serve different purposes–as a library, a broadband hub, and as a location for the county’s Health and Human Services division, including its meals for the elderly (or “congregate meals”). The county is currently paying hefty rent to Church on the Rock to host those meals there, off of U.S. 1.

“It was not until that moment, with a release of emotions,” Albanese said of the moment in January when she got word of the $4 million award, “that I finally felt for the first time that this project would actually come to fruition. According to Albert Einstein, Success comes from curiosity, concentration, perseverance and self-criticism. I believe it is all of those attributes that brought us here today.”

Here being the seven-acre site along Commerce Parkway that has already been cleared for construction, and that becomes the latest of several projects turning that area of Bunnell into a new gravity center for the town: Bunnell marked the groundbreaking of its future City Hall and police department’s home only a few months ago along the same road, itself soon to be a 1.7-mile connector to U.S. 1.

The latest groundbreaking was like a reunion of the one in April, bringing back all the county commissioners, Palm Coast Mayor Alfin and Bunnell Mayor Robinson, Bunnell City Manger Alvin Jackson, County Administrator Heidi Petito and Deputy County Administrator Jorge Salinas, Library Board of Trustees members, including Jim Ulsamer, the board chair known in the past for occasionally giving the County Commission a piece of his mind when he felt the library system wasn’t given its due place in priorities, and Friends of the Library presidents past and present, among others. They were under a tent, but the heat was such–the heat index was to be somewhere around 110–that maybe it wouldn’t have been such a bad idea to hold the ceremony under last Monday’s diluvial rains, which caused the event to be postponed a week.

“It’s my favorite groundbreaking by far,” County Commissioner Dave Sullivan said.




Albanese had described herself as a storyteller when she started her speech. She pity that skill to use as she took the audience on an imaginary tour of the future library’s one-story, 23,000 square feet, starting with a welcoming canopy around the building. The Health and Human Services portion will be at the north end of the building, with its own entrance, reception lobby, consultation rooms, two restrooms, a storage closet, a workspace with four offices, a 25-person meeting room and a staff kitchen.

“As you enter the main building you enter into a pre-function lobby where you will find a small micro market for those study induced munchies, public restrooms and a state-of-the-art community center with a caterer’s kitchen which can hold approximately 300 people,” Albanese said, making it one of the largest public gathering spaces in the county, in league with the largest room at the Palm Coast Community Center. “This room can be subdivided by a wall and used for two functions at the same time or open fully to one room for larger events.” That’s the room to be used for congregate meals during the week.

You then move into the main portion of the library through another set of double doors. “Imagine if you will the colors of blue and green to mimic the natural beauty of Flagler County from coast to country,” Albanese said. “To your right will be the customer service desk, passport office and hidden behind a wall will be a staff area, offices and a drive-thru window for your after hour returns or business hour hold pick-ups. Beyond that you will find an innovation lab and podcasting room where kids of all ages can learn, engage and create. On the other side of the building is the youth services department, featured with a wall that curves like a wave on the beach. The children’s department and teen center are divided by a shared staff workroom and 50-person capacity program room.”




The adult collection, computers and seating will be in the center of the building, with double doors at the back of the building opening to the view of our natural surroundings and future site of an amphitheater, making the Nexus Center “many things to many people.”

For the groundbreaking, Albanese made good on her promise to use the same shovel that the late Doug Cisney had used at the 1998 groundbreaking for the main branch library on Palm Coast Parkway.

You can turn your first page at the new library in October 2025.