The Centre County Library and Historical Museum is moving forward with a much-needed expansion for its Centre Hall library branch, thanks in part to some major state grant funding.
The library was recently awarded a $750,000 Keystone Grant from Pennsylvania’s Department of Education for a $2.4 million project that will more than double the Centre Hall branch’s size, along with other renovations.
“I just want to express how excited the staff is for this project,” branch manager Kathleen Edwards said during a discussion of the project at Tuesday’s Centre County Board of Commissioners meeting. “It’s been a long time coming. We definitely need the extra space, and we’re just excited to be able to serve the Penns Valley community better with more more programs, more books, more services.”
Work will include an expansion at the rear of the property that will increase the branch’s space from 2,500 square feet to more than 5,000 square feet, CCLHM’s Denise Sticha said.
The project will also upgrade heating, plumbing and HVAC systems and add a family bathroom and large meeting room that can be divided into to two, providing more comfortable space for programming.
“We’ll be able to really expand,” Sticha said. “So as we’re gearing up right now for Summer Library Pursuit, which is our signature summer programming, we’re just really looking forward to visualizing what it can look like in the future when we have a lot more space to do things.”
The Centre Hall library opened in 1996 with a collection of 6,500 books to serve about 11,000 people in the Penns Valley. Thirty years later, it is home to a collection of more than 20,000 books and five public-access computing workstations, while serving a population that has grown by 20% to 12,500, according to a document detailing the need for the expansion.
Board of Commissioners Chair Mark Higgins said the Centre Hall library is “well loved but needs more elbow room.”
“We know that you’ve got books floor-to-ceiling at this point and are needing the extra space,” Higgins said.
CCLHM was one of 27 libraries in 15 counties to receive a combine $11 million in the most recent round of Keystone Grant funding.
The grant requires a dollar-for-dollar match, and Sticha said CCLHM had to demonstrate it had the financial resources to complete the project.
“We do have a capital campaign committee that’s been meeting for the past couple of years,” she said. “We were just kind of waiting for the Keystone Grant announcement because if we got the grant, our fundraising focus could go in one direction. If we didn’t get the grant, it would go in a different direction. So now that we have the grant, we can move forward full steam ahead. So, we’re we’re confident that we’ll be able to raise the money to do this project.
“While Centre County Library and Historical Museum does have the resources to do that through our investments, we’re hopeful that we won’t have to dip into our investments to do that.”
The county collaborated with the library on the state funding application, and Centre County Deputy Administrator Natalie Corman commended the library board and staff for their work in the competitive grant process, which resulted in receiving the maximum amount available from the program.
“It is the effort of the library and their board and their staff to be able to be as competitive and as prepared as you need to be with the Keystone Grant going through this process,” Corman said. “And so I just would like to highlight to them that, being only one of 15 counties in the commonwealth to receive this funding for this project is important and special.”
Library officials anticipate construction on the expansion will begin this fall and be completed in the fall of 2027.
Adjacent to Centre Hall Elementary School, the library serves as an important community resource that has adapted to meet needs as times change, Edwards said.
She noted that loaning WiFi hotspots is one example of how the library benefits more rural families beyond books. Last year, the Partnership for Penns Valley Library Services received a grant to buy 12 more hotspots, “and they’re never on the shelf; they’re always out.”
“A lot of people think that, you know, ‘who uses a library anymore? You can just buy an e-book, use Amazon,’” Edwards said. “We have a lot of people that use our books, but the things that are not books are, I think, what makes the library so important and special, all the other resources that we have, and this is going to help a lot.”
