Flagler County Has Been Promising a South Side Library Since 2014. Commission Will Promise Again Next Week.

The building until last fall had housed the Bunnell branch of the library since 2004. The branch had to make way for the government-funded SMA Healthcare facility. The county downsized the branch from a 3.100-square foot facility to a 1,152-square-foot storefront at Marvin’s Garden, two miles away near Belle Terre Parkway, and a good distance from the center of Bunnell, which had sent many pedestrians to the branch previously. The smaller branch had to cut down the number of computers it provided, from eight to three, and eliminate non-fiction or biography holdings from the stacks there, though patrons can still request to have them shipped over from the main branch in palm Coast.

The county owns the building where SAMA Healthcare is now located, but it must pay close to $1,400 in rent, not including a $12,000 charge to move broadband service there, rising to $1,4 61 in the second year. “It’s a change obviously but we understand it’s something we had to do temporarily while the new facility is being built,” Holly Albanese, the library director, said. “There was a definite need in this community for mental health.” 




It’s all supposed to be temporary, until the county builds the long-promised south-side library, to be located on Commerce Parkway, opposite the Sheriff’s Operations Center now under construction. The county shafted the library there, too. The branch was supposed to go up on the grounds now occupied by the future operations center. Since those grounds were more favorable for the law enforcement agency, the library was bumped across the street once the county managed to secure all the land it needed there from First Baptist Church. It’s not a major change and only a slightly smaller site (7.2 as opposed to 8.4 acres), but it’s reflective of how the county has seen its library as somewhat less than a priority.

Another example of that is the time it’s taking to get a south side library–seven years so far, in Albanese’s estimation.  The County Commission, with an entirely different membership, actually started talking about a new library in 2014. A year earlier, Jim Ulsamer, who chaired the library board then and now, appeared before the commission to ask that the commission end the prevarications about library finances and approve the sort of special taxing district that often supports library systems across the country. The commission ignored the proposal.

Next week (on Jan. 24) the commission meets in workshop to discuss, in part, plans for the new south side library. The Library Board of Trustees met last week and got a presentation from Albanese on preliminary design plans prepared by Orlando-based Rhodes & Brito, the architects. But it isn’t clear how that workshop will be much different from the one in 2014, when every commissioner was for a new library but the dollars were simply not there. At the time, the commission was paying for what would turn out to be the doomed Sheriff’s Operations Center off State Road 100, a boondoggle it’s still paying for, and will be paying for, for years. It was preparing to pay for a new jail. And of course now it’s also paying for the new operations center. Much of that funding is from the sales tax supplement. As far as a new library is concerned, that revenue source is currently tapped out.

Still, optimism is the word of the day.




“I think this time it’s going to happen because they’ve spent the money to have this design worked on,” Ulsamer said. The library in Palm Coast was built in 2001 when the population was around 49,000, he said. The population is now nearing 120,000. “The need is there, I think finally the political will is there and I think they feel optimistic they can get the money. There are other sources.” Library officials are hoping that the way the building is designed, accommodating a separate county government division and serving as a shelter, would spur commissioners to fund it somehow. 

“I’m elated, I’m just so excited,” Albanese said of the design. “The conceptual floor plan is everything we could possibly wish for. This is going to be so beneficial to the community. We are presenting this to the community as a joint-use facility, so it it is not just a library, it’s going to be a location for Health and Human Services as well, and there’s going to be a huge conference center area.”

The facility could be used for corporate events. Since the county severed its relationship with Flagler Beach at that city’s Wickline Center in late October–where the county was operating rent-free–the county has been renting space at Church on the Rock in Bunnell (at $3,100 a month) to provide congregate meals for the elderly. That expense could be eliminated once the meals are served in the new joint facility.

The current design has the library portion at 22,000 square feet, the conference center at 5,000 square feet, and the Health and Human Services portion at 4,000 square feet, for a total 32,000 square feet on one level. The Palm Coast library is 30,000 square feet. The south library will have a drive-thru window. “We still plan on strengthening and hardening the building so especially that conference portion could be used as a shelter,” Albanese said. The shelter would be used by staff or their families, and be a food site for first responders. “The use of this library and everything it has to offer is only limited by your imagination.” 




The library’s administrative headquarters will be located at the Bunnell branch. It’s an important technicality that helps rank the project high in state grants. It’s been working. Flagler’s grant application ranks first in the state for what would amount to $500,000, though the Legislature has not appropriated the sum–and Flagler has ranked first in previous years, only to be disappointed by the lack of appropriations. 

The new library at today’s prices is broadly estimated to cost around $14 million, based on $450 a square foot, in Albanese’s estimation. (In 2014, the commission estimated the cost at $3 million to $4.2 million.) The library has set aside $700,000 of its own money for the project. (The library’s passport service generates $120,000 in a normal year. It’s been slower because of Covid, generating around $80,000.) There’s some possibility that federal Covid aid or infrastructure dollars could be steered toward the project. Beyond that, the county would have to also consider the operational costs of a new library, which would require nine staffers, six of whom would be hired as additional employees–assuming the hours of operations are not too limited.

“If we can build this for the sheriff, we’ve got to come through for the library,” Ulsamer said. “The library is a building people want to go to, not a building they have to go to.”