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The new addition to the Lansing Community Library Center (LCLC) building began this Monday.   McPherson Builders started moving in equipment on May 1 and hope to finish the addition sometime in October 2006. The new addition will help make the library part of the “Lansing Town Square”. Thanks to the generosity of local businesses, foundations, individuals, and the State of New York, volunteers for the LCLC capital campaign have raised most the money needed to pay for the construction and hope to finish the financial campaign with a community fund-raising celebration this summer in August.

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Lansing, the fastest growing town in Tompkins County, had no local library services until an all-volunteer team completed some basic renovations to the old Town Hall building, moved in some shelves and donated books, and opened its doors in 2001. LCLC, a reading center of Tompkins County Public Library, is directed, operated, and funded entirely by committed local volunteers. Over the last 4 years, use of the library has grown exponentially and the demand for more and better library services for the Lansing community required that the building be renovated and expanded.

The first phase of the renovation work was completed in July 2005 and concentrated on the lower level of the building. A new reading room was created, the lower level stairs were rebuilt, and two meeting rooms and a book-processing area were refurbished. The present construction phase will build a new main entrance facing the Town Hall, a new children’s reading room, more storage and work rooms, better facilities for volunteers to serve patrons borrowing materials, an accessible lavatory on the lower level, and universal access to both floors by a new lift. The accessible entrance will be on the west side of the new addition and will include a sidewalk from the “handicapped parking area” to the lower level. A hallway will lead from the entryway to the lift itself on the east side of the building.

Why does the new main entrance to the library face the Town Hall? The new entryway is part of the effort to create a “Lansing Town Square” with the other adjacent community buildings: the Community Center (formerly the Grange Hall), the new historical records building, the restored one-room school house, and the present Town Hall. The town square concept, along with the lovely new landscaping around the buildings, and the new addition to the library building, will make this part of Lansing attractive and inviting.

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