Continuing our brief series on the Lee County Library, let’s use yesterday’s listing of the costs, advantages, and disadvantages to try to select a particular site.
As I said in Part 1 of this series, good visibility from the highway is key to me. That would make the library/meeting center easy to find, easy to give directions to, and hopefully even get some spur of the moment drive-by traffic. Therefore any site not easily visible from Hwy 82 is automatically out of contention, meaning Sites F, H, and I are gone – and site G is barely on.
Next, in order to maximize actual space that can actually be developed, the site needs to have off site storm water retention. This eliminates Site C, leaving us with Sites A, B, D, E, and G in contention.
Next, the site selected needs to be easily accessible from both directions on the highway. Meaning that it needs to be at a traffic light or, at a minimum, a crossover. This eliminates Sites A and E.
We next eliminate Site D as both by far the most expensive of the top 3 sites and due to the fact that even though it has a crossover on Hwy 82, apparently that crossover has limited visibility and no traffic light – with no plans for a traffic light. This means that entering the site traveling south on Hwy 82 could be dangerous, as well as exiting the site to head towards Albany.
We’re now down to Site B and Site G as our final contenders. Site B has the better visibility and can have entrance/exit points along two sides of the property. Furthermore, Site G is not ready and the building/parking lot would have to be designed around the property lines – potentially resulting in higher design costs and definitely resulting in higher construction costs and longer delays on that construction due to having to get the site ready.
Therefore Site B is clearly the best property, largely irrespective of costs.
Looking directly at cost of the land, this is the ranked list of net costs to the county, from cheapest to most expensive:
Site I: $45,000
Site F: $165,000
Site A: $192,500
Site H: $192,500
Site B: $247,500
Site G: $302,500
Site E: $357,500
Site D: $635,000
Site C: $1,500,000 (includes existing building)
Clearly, Site B is actually the exact center of the list of net cost to the county. However, of the 4 sites that were cheaper, 3 had no or poor visibility from Hwy 82 and the other had no access from Hwy 82 South.
Therefore, Site B is absolutely the right choice, based on the data available online, and I applaud both the Library Board of Directors and the Board of Commissioners for choosing and approving this site as the site of the new Lee County Library.
