Staff Reports

Redstone Review

LYONS – The Town of Lyons, working with Colorado State University design students and professor Mike Tupa, professor of landscape architect at CSU, and with the Colorado Department of Local Affairs, hosted an open house on February 10 to solicit discussion regarding the possible future expansion of the Lyons Library.

The CSU students along with Tupa had toured Lyons looking for possible sites for a new

library or places to expand the current library. At the open house, residents were able to view plans for expanded libraries in other small communities. The attendees were asked for comments and to give opinions and concerns about what services they would like the library to provide in the future.

The seven sites included first and foremost the favorite site for everyone: the current site of the Lyons Depot library on Fifth and Railroad Avenues. The other sites included the Odd Fellows Hall (not owned by the town), the Visitor’s Center in Sandstone Park, the public works building next to the town hall, the south east corner of Fourth and Main Street where the Breggo business is located in the old Conoco station, the triangle across from the fire station, and 443 Main St., the current site of Visibility owned by John Burke and Janice Gavan.

Town of Lyons Library Future Development Committee is chaired by Trustee Juli Waugh. This committee works in conjunction with the Friends of the Library and the Library Board.

Loretta Milburn is the president of the Friends of the Library Board and she said she personally likes the current library site and the idea of a new building that would wrap around the current building. (One of the plans on display at the open house showed a plan like this.) The Friends, Milburn said, are there to support the library in whatever form the library exists in.

“We’re just there to kind of help support and advertise the services, and that could be a broad range of things,” said Milburn. “The thing that I feel good about is that in the last 18 months the Friends of the Library Board has been able to bring the topic of library needs and community desires for the library to the forefront.”

Milburn said that a few years ago a group of developers proposed building a library space, but they never contacted the library about what it needed.  “The Friends of the Library Board formed an ad hoc committee at that time to address some of the requirements of a library in a small town,” she said. “We used some Colorado State library standards, in terms of space for a town of a certain size, and what activities are included in a library.  That ad hoc committee put out a survey to the Lyons Library’s users about what they would like to see offered in a library, and the ad hoc committee presented the survey results to the Lyons Town board in conjunction with the Library Board.  In fact, that ad hoc committee had on it a couple of Library Board members; it included people from the Friends board, and the Library Board, and volunteers. The results were presented to the Library Board, the Lyons Town Board, and the planning commission and development committee that was updating the comp plan.  The information was also provided to the company that was doing the comp plan to bring out the fact that the library’s needs to be thought about before a building is actually built, and the people who run the library and use and work in the library need to be asked what they want to happen.”

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