By Vita Duva, Correspondent
It has been a long and bumpy ride for the Cranbury Public Library, as the organization has relentlessly continued to press forward with its plans to implement a new building and municipal parking lot at Park Place West in Cranbury Township.
And while it is certainly not news that the library has come face-to-face with a number of hurdles over the course of the past few months, what is news is that after a work session was held during a Cranbury Township Committee meeting on Monday, Nov. 14, library officials believe they have finally made the breakthrough and the project can move forward.
The work session – as promised – saw various Township professionals, library staff and concerned residents pack the Cranbury’s Town Hall Meeting Room from wall-to-wall.
Township Engineer Bill Tanner; Traffic Engineer Andy Feranda; and Chief of the Cranbury Township Police Department Rickey Varga were all in attendance, alongside representatives from The Cranbury School, the Cranbury Volunteer Fire Company, the Cranbury Environmental Commission and the Cranbury Business and Professional Association.
Mayor, Dan Mulligan steered the ship at the start of the heavy discussion, framing what the committee was going to be working on in order to streamline the conversation.
“So, what I am going to say here tonight is, I think one thing we can all agree on is that we need to have a library in town,” said the mayor. “I’m really looking for thoughtful feedback from stakeholders in town tonight that will help us understand if we are going in the right direction. Let us know now if there are any concerns.”
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.
As for the library’s previous proposal for the use of a bio retention basin – or “rain garden” – Mr. Tanner rattled off a list of pros and cons for the committee to consider.
“If you’re going above ground, this is the way to go,” Mr. Tanner concluded of the relatively new system. “This is actually building to the future. So, I can’t say, ‘no this isn’t a good idea.’”
The work session also saw over a handful of residents give feedback – all who spoke in favor of the project in its now revised and current state.
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.
“I think this was good. I feel like we’re going in the right direction here,” Mayor Mulligan said as the hourlong work session began to finally wrap up. “We’re comfortable with the plan, we like the way it’s laid out. We’re just looking to maybe tweak the parking lot a little bit.”
Pending a slight 20- to 30-foot adjustment to the parking lot in order to maximize its use for both the library and the businesses in town, and revisions to the agreement with updated cost estimations, the rest is now up to the library to raise the necessary funds and get the shovels in the ground.
“We’re going full-speed ahead with raising money,” Kirstie Venanzi, president of the Cranbury Public Library Board of Trustees said. “We want to break ground in the spring.”
