The Wake County Board of Commissioners seems poised to support a 2.6-acre site in Southwest Raleigh for the replacement of the Athens Drive High School Community Library.
At a special meeting Monday, the commissioners heard from county staff about the two options that the county had zeroed in on for the new library: the 2.6-acre Well Fed Community Garden located directly across the street from the high school, and a 12-acre site currently owned by the Wake County Public School system at the intersection of Tryon Road and Yates Mill Road located nearly 3 miles away inside Cary town limits.
The commissioners are scheduled to vote on the new site at their regular meeting next week, but indicated at the end of the special meeting Monday which way they were leaning. Five of the seven commissioners said they supported the Well Fed Garden site. Two commissioners, Susan Evans and Vickie Adamson, said they supported the Tryon Road site.
The upcoming vote follows years of advocacy from library patrons and community members who have lobbied to keep the replacement library local. A $142 million library bond that voters approved in 2024 will pay for construction of the new library, along with several other library projects around the county.
Wake County assistant manager Ashley Jacobs said county staff had come to a negotiated sales agreement with Arthur and Anya Gordon, the Well Fed Community Garden’s current owners, for $1.586 million, down from an initial asking price of $1.8 million.
The Cary site is already owned by the Wake County school system, which would save the county money, but is not as accessible to public transit or lower-income residents. Currently, the closest GoTriangle bus stop to the Tryon Road site is two-thirds of a mile away and a GoCary stop one-third of a mile away. While there is no bus stop at the Tryon Road site, Commissioner Evans, the transportation and transit liaison to the board of commissioners, said GoTriangle would consider adding a bus stop at the Tryon Road site if a new library were to be placed there, though there are currently no plans for a stop at the site.
Evans’s and Adamson’s preference for the Tryon Road site stemmed from its larger size and the potential for expansion in the growing area of the county. In her presentation to the commissioners, Jacobs said a four-to-five acre site is typical for a community branch, and seven-to-eight acres is needed for future expansion.
“I’m focused on how we serve the entire region that is Southwest Raleigh, Swift Creek, unincorporated area going down toward Lake Wheeler, all of that needs to be served by this library as effectively as possible and we need to plan for the years to come,” said Evans, whose district covers both proposed sites.
“And while yes, it is a replacement for the Athens Drive Library, for me, it would have to be decided upon what is going to best serve that whole area. The pro for the Well Fed Garden site is it is in the existing community, it has walkability, it’s close to the high school. But it is not the optimal size for what we would like to see and it doesn’t allow us any ability for expansion of the library … That causes me some concern.”
For other commissioners, the accessibility of the Well Fed Garden site is its selling point. It also serves a greater number of residents—125,148 as opposed to 99,874 with the Tryon site—living within a 10-minute drive to the library, a key metric the county considers in its planning. And, as Commissioner Safiyah Jackson noted, there are already several regional libraries serving the area, including Southeast Regional and Oberlin Regional Library in Raleigh and the Cary Regional and Eva Perry Regional Libraries in Cary.
“There is something to be said about a community library sitting in the middle of the regional libraries and presenting all of those residents with the option of having a quaint community library experience as well as the choice of a regional library,” Jackson said. “We should be thinking about growth in this county … but I don’t get the sense … that the growth in this area is putting pressure on these other libraries such that this one has to be regional to account for that much more growth.”
Several residents who supported keeping the Athens Drive Community Library local attended the meeting. They clapped and celebrated after the commissioners indicated they would likely select the Well Fed Garden site.
“I’m shocked, I’m shocked,” said Yevonne Brannon, a longtime resident of Athens Drive neighborhood and one of the main organizers of neighbors in support of keeping the library local. “This is really a story of the little guy taking on the big guy and winning.”
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