By Mike Morsch, Executive editor
After years of planning and fundraising, the Cranbury Public Library is closing in on an important goal: having enough money for a new building.
According to her “From the Director’s Desk” column on the library website, director Marilynn Mullen revealed that only a $500,000 gap remains to be closed for the library to have raised enough funds for the project.
“If that sounds like a lofty goal, I’m happy to tell you we are well on they way,” wrote Ms. Mullen. “Since we started our fall campaign with a mailing to each resident in town, we have received (more than) 25 donations totaling $129,000.”
The Cranbury Public Library Foundation is currently offering what it calls a “$100,000 Challenge Grant.” Ms. Mullen said that several leadership donors have banded together to challenge Cranbury residents to become part of the fundraising project.
“These donors will match donations one-for-one up to $100,000,” Ms. Mullen wrote in her column. “If you donate before the end of the year, your donation will be doubled and the Foundation will meet its 2016 fundraising goal.”
At the Nov. 14 Cranbury Township Committee work session, library officials finally made the breakthrough they were looking for to move the project forward.
The meeting featured various township professionals, library staff and concerned residents, including Township Engineer Bill Tanner; Traffic Engineer Andy Feranda; and Chief of the Cranbury Township Police Department Rickey Varga. Also at the meeting were representatives from The Cranbury School, the Cranbury Volunteer Fire Company, the Cranbury Environmental Commission and the Cranbury Business and Professional Association.
As the discussion unfolded, where a library would land if the necessary funds are raised by the library, where the municipality would place the parking lot if the project were to commence, unresolved issues concerning land easements, engineering constraints, and other matters – such as pedestrian access and trash removal – were further discussed.
To date, the current plan maintains the full open-space vista, the library’s original 11,600 sq. ft. building design, the parking lot of 20 cars in front, and at the end of Park Place West, a semi-circle for easy exiting.
The rest is now up to the library foundation if it wants to break ground on the project in 2017.
“We’re going full-speed ahead with raising money,” Kirstie Venanzi, president of the Cranbury Public Library Board of Trustees said at the Nov. 14 meeting. “We want to break ground in the spring.”
Information about the “Close the Gap” fundraising campaign and instructions on how to donate online can be found at www.CrnaburyLibraryFoundation.org. Tax deductible donations by check should be made payable to Cranbury Public Library Foundation and can be dropped off at the library or sent to: Cranbury Public Library Foundation, 23 N. Main St., Cranbury, N.J., 08512.
