The Jefferson County Library plans to open a fourth location in Cedar Hill this year, executive director Tony Benningfield said.
The library purchased a lot with a 2,400-square-foot building on it at 6780 Mall Drive in Cedar Hill, as well as an adjacent vacant lot for the new satellite location, he said.
That property is next to Savannah’s Restaurant and Bar.
Benningfield said the property with the building on it cost $300,000, and the empty lot next to it cost another $67,000. All the property was purchased from Tazz Investments.
He said the board voted unanimously to buy the property, and the library is using money from its reserve account to pay for the purchase.
“We didn’t want to lease, we wanted to own,” Benningfield said. “We want it to feel and be permanent.”
Benningfield said the building was a small retail complex that housed several businesses over the years, including a hair salon and a thrift store. It currently is divided into four spaces and will be remodeled, which he estimates will cost less than $150,000.
“We got a lot of walls to knock down and make it a bigger open space, making it one unit instead of four,” he said.
Benningfield said while the design plans are not set, the location might have a drive- thru for people to pick up items.
He said the satellite location will make library services more accessible to countians in the west part of the county.
“We’re establishing a smaller system down in the more rural part of this Northwest (R-1 School) District,” Benningfield said. “It will have a book collection; it will have public computer access and internet access.”
He said the board has not decided on an official name for the fourth location, but right now he refers to it as the Cedar Hill satellite branch and hopes to have it open by September.
Benningfield said after looking at a map it was clear there was a need for a satellite location.
“There was a large swath of land down to the southwest with thousands of people who had to travel 20 miles to get to even the High Ridge branch. By placing (a branch) out in Cedar Hill, it’s the perfect spot and it cuts the distance in half for any people from Hillsboro and Grandview,” he said.
Benningfield said it will be considered a “satellite branch” because of its smaller size and because it won’t offer as many resources. The new location is one tenth the size of the 24,000-square-foot Northwest Branch of the library.
He said all online databases available at the library system’s other branches will be accessible, but the satellite location won’t have a magazine collection. It won’t process passport applications either.
However, the new branch will have about 10,000 books, Benningfield said.
“It will have everything that everybody expects a library to do,” he said.
He said the Northwest Branch has about 94,000 items in its collection, the Arnold branch has approximately 80,000 and the Windsor Branch has about 46,000.
People will be able to request materials from other branches, which could arrive in as little as a day.
He said there will also be a meeting room and several computers for public use at the satellite branch.
He said five or six people will be hired once the location opens. He said the location will have the same hours as the three other branches – 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
The library system also has the Northwest Branch is at 5680 Hwy. PP in High Ridge, the Arnold Branch is at 1701 Missouri State Road and the Windsor Branch is at 7479 Metropolitan Blvd. in Barnhart.