A Tour of New Nexus Center Is a ‘Coast to Country’ Surfing Experience in Flagler’s Ultra-Modern Library

The book stacks aren’t up yet and most of the furniture hasn’t been brought in, so the sense of open-space airiness that greeted the Library Board of Trustees on its visit Monday of the $16 million Nexus Center–Flagler County’s south-side library in Bunnell–may be more pronounced than it will be when it’s filled up. 

But it’s not just the floor space or the large windows, the natural light, the high ceilings and the blue-green trim that make you feel as if you’re not entirely indoors.  The entire 23,000-square-foot building, with the exception of the back offices and the segment reserved for the Department of Health and Human Services, is designed along a “Coast to Country” theme that creates a sense of motion as if from one to the other and back–as if you are surfing, and no just the web, or books. 

“Holly had a lot of hand in that and I give her credit for that,” said Donald O’Brien, the new chair of the Library Board of Trustees. Jim Ulsamer, who chaired it for years, stepped down a few weeks ago. “This has been a project of love for her for a long time, and it shows.” The south-side library was first conceptualized nearly a decade and a half ago, though its current look emerged only with its designs. 

A slatted wood-drop ceiling in the shape of a wave in the long stretches atop the vast entrance corridor, and again in the main room of the library. Carpeting is patterned as if of wavelets flowing from end to end. Ceiling lights, so often straight-dull white neon,  curve and flow in succession. Water fountains are framed in droplet-shaped blue-green tile. The main counter is another wave that fills a corner of the central reading room. 

“It was the architect, Rhodes & Brito that brought that theme to life with the idea of the wave wall,” Library Director Holly Albanese, who led the tour, said today. “As soon as I saw it on paper, I knew we had to make that happen as a true reflection of Flagler County.  In tandem, the interior designer, Amanda Wannen, from Kaleidescope Interior Design, met with Heidi and me several times throughout the design process to discuss finishes, colors, flooring options, paint, lighting, etc.” Heidi Petito is the county administrator. “Mandy really did an outstanding job of interpreting that theme and our vision for the spaces into what you saw yesterday.”

The building isn’t yet ready for occupancy: the punchlist is over 100 pages long, Albanese said, though it’s a different world from when the Board of Trustees last visited in March, when the building looked more like a skeletal frame of concrete and aluminum. 

“It was a lot more than I expected,” said Donald O’Brien, who chairs the Board of Trustees (Jim Ulsamer resigned a few weeks ago after years of service). “The library services down in that area are sorely needed, so I hope it’ll increase our coverage to many more folks. That overall community meeting space,  I really hope it can be used by a lot of groups and organizations.” 

O’Brien was referring to a community room with a capacity for 300 people, or 225 if everyone is seated at tables. The room will be subdivided in two, with one half used by library patrons during regular library hours and the other half used by the elderly in the county’s meal program, which is run by the Department of Human Services (and has for years been offered at Church on the Rock, a rental cost of between $40,000 and $50,000 a year that will be eliminated). Both halves will be used in after-hours events. 

“It’s a great events venue, and as you can see, it’s set up for weddings,” Albanese said. The community room is attached to a modern kitchen with enormous ovens, freezers and fridges, and ample space. Albanese hopes the room will be a source of revenue. It’s the way of new libraries, built for the versatile use of spaces. 

“I’ll feel better when I see the stacks,” O’Brien, an avid reader, said. “But it really shows what a modern library looks like with the different sections and that technology.” 

There’s a soundproof podcast room, a large “innovation lab” that can seat 60 people, there’s a large children’s room and a separate, equally large teen room with its own teen-technology room (for gaming and other uses). Teens have their own enclosed study room. There’s also a passport room–the passport application center has been a source of strong revenue for the library, bringing in nearly $15,000 last May alone–and drive-through option. The only thing missing is a coffee shop.

Kaleidoscope’s tagline is “Your smile is your logo.” It seems to be its designs’ guiding principle, too, its colors and shapes complementing the brightness of so many windows and see-through interior walls that, however maligned for its price tag by a few county commissioners in the past months, the criticism would have a difficult time surviving a visit: patrons of the Palm Coast branch will be jealous, and may even forgive the more limited hours forced on their branch by the reduction in staff the commissioners forced on the library system. (While the two libraries combined will be offering a seven-day schedule, each library will be closed two days of the week, with Palm Coast hours cut by a quarter.) 

“The building is very well designed and I think the residents will be very happy,” County Commission Chair Andy Dance, who took the tour, said. What he saw–what everyone saw–was a bracing counterpoint to budget wrangles. “It’ll be a very popular place for our senior citizens, homeschoolers. I  love the children’s and teen rooms, especially being on the south side and adding an alternate venue. The vision I think is coming through.” 

Albanese had secured grants in part thanks to the design that combines the library with the Health and Human Services portion of the building, where a dozen and a half employees will be working full time. There will be no need for security guards, as there had been at one point at the Palm Coast branch library: the Nexus Center is a few hundred paces from the Sheriff’s Operations Center, so any issues there mean a swarm of deputies might respond. 

The Director’s Office–that is, Albanese’s, as long as she chooses to remain with the county–will be at the Nexus Center, moving from the Palm Coast branch. “Since Bunnell is the county seat and we will be located within the Government Services Complex it made sense to make this the Administrative Headquarters,” Albanese said. “However, I will not be far from Palm Coast and my very capable Assistant Director, Joe Saloom, will be located in the Palm Coast library.”

“The overall design team did a good job inside and out,” Dance, a landscape architect, said. “It’s not complete yet, so we need to give it another month to be done, but the early walkthrough was very encouraging.”

The library is expected to open in a few weeks.