Iconic and flexible: these words describe the new Foley Public Library according to leisure services executive director David Thompson.

“We want an iconic building that, when people drive by, they see it, and they want to go there, and it becomes a gathering place, a community place,” Thompson said in a press release.

This $20 million project will be “the most expensive building we’ve (the city) ever done in the city of Foley,” Thompson told AL.com. Most of the financing will be from loans, and $2 million is appropriated in funding secured by Rep. Jerry Carl. This project was a re-election campaign priority for Mayor Ralph Hellmich in 2012.

The new location is off Orange Avenue, approximately two blocks south of the current location on East Laurel Avenue. Construction begins in early 2024, and the library opens in 2025.

Thompson said the goal is to have this library over the next decade that “can adapt and change to the changing needs of our community and our users.”

Birmingham’s Williams Blackstock Architects is designing the project. Thompson is excited about working with them because they’ve been able to plan precisely what they need carefully and want and have it one two-story, nearly 40,000 square-foot building.

“Our library has been kind of busting at the seams for a couple of years,” Thompson said about their current 21,000-square-foot building, built in the 1980s and serving about 3,500 active cardholders. According to Census data, Foley’s population has also been bursting at the seams, from 14,618 in 2010 to 23,577, a 61% increase.

“We are the busiest library in Baldwin County, and we just continue to grow. So it’s very challenging to do all the programming and things that we want to do with the current facility that we have.”

Thompson’s vision for this new building is that it will be more than just a library but a community hub.” The new library includes plans for a dedicated STEAM STEM lab with a 3D printer and sinks for the community to create projects that incorporate water. Thompson said their current multipurpose space requires hauling, setting up, and breaking down resources.

“We want it to be a community building, so the multipurpose space that we have really will help us engage some groups that we might have been able to engage before and keep people coming through our library that may not have experienced our library before,” Thompson said.

This construction comes at a time when libraries have been under attack from proponents of moving or removing books with mature or LGBTQ+ content from the shelves. According to data obtained by AL.com, 10 young adult books were moved to the adult section in Foley this month, and one adult book, Gender Queer, was removed from the library.

The library’s children’s section will expand, and a separate teen section will be on the second floor. Separating the two sections is part of the solution from keeping children from inappropriate content, according to Thompson.

“It’s very important for teens to have their own area,” Thompson said in the release. “They don’t want to be in the little kids area. They’re not quite adults yet. So being able to create that area is something that we really tried to focus on.”

The current 25-person computer lab will expand into private study rooms for more space. Tech-savvy librarians will conduct community training classes. The new facility will house an auditorium, café and a bookstore.

Thompson said their genealogy expert, Jeanette Bornholt, is one of the most respected experts in Alabama, so the new library will include a genealogy space. Other highlights include a sensory room for children with special needs and an outdoor programming space that overlooks a dog park and connects to a walking trail.

“We’re trying to make sure that we have the flexibility to address maybe some of the communities that we don’t always address, and everything that we’ve done is we’ve created it with flexibility,” Thompson said.