ERVING — In the first half hour that Eving’s new library was open on Sunday, Library Director Barbara Friedman guessed at least 50 people had come to visit — well more than could have comfortably fit in the library’s old building.
The new building, on Care Drive, opened for the first time on Sunday. The building was nearly a year in construction, having broken ground March 29 of last year.
The project, including funding and permitting, was at least five years in the making, members of the Board of Trustees said on Sunday.
The library is still waiting for some furniture and shelves to be delivered. Its grand opening is set for March 29, a year after construction workers first broke ground, said Mackensey Bailey, who is on the library’s board of trustees.
The soft opening this weekend was expedited to accommodate state Sen. Jo Comerford, D-Northampton, who is touring local libraries, and visited Erving on Sunday.
“To see it now and know it’s going to be here for years and years to come for Erving is great,” Comerford said.
The project is worth about $5.8 million total. About $2.7 million of that came through a state grant, and the rest through Town Meeting articles.
At approximately 8,300 square feet, the new library is about four times larger than the old building, at the corner of Route 63 and Park Street, and can hold about twice as much material, Friedman said.
That extra space includes meeting rooms that can be booked after hours, a “maker space” room that the library board members expect to be well used by the neighboring Erving Elementary School, a teen room, a wing devoted to the children’s section and a large central lobby.
Library staff expect that the new facilities, combined with the new location next to Erving Elementary School and the Senior Center, will draw more traffic than the old building.
“Really, it will become the hub of the town,” said library board member Bailey.
Katie Sallen, who lives in Erving, said that she already brought her two daughters, Janessa, 8, and Annika, 5, to the old library at least once a week. She said she expected to use the new one more often because it is in walking distance to the elementary school.
“It’s beautiful,” Sallen said. She and her daughters were in the children’s section, playing a ukulele.
“In the old library, there were like one or two bathrooms. In this one, there are like four,” Janessa said.
The teen room was also well received by regular patrons of the library. Bryce Finn, 15, and Eli Petraccia, 13, spoke highly of the new computers, which they were using to play games, and were also excited by a sliding door that closes the teen room from the rest of the library.
“We can close the door and be loud,” Petraccia said.
“In the old place, if we were loud, we were told to be quiet, or kicked out,” Finn said. “I was only kicked out twice.”
In the past, libraries were quiet study spaces, said Dan Hammock, who is on the board of trustees. The new library was designed to reflect the way people use libraries now, he said.
“Now they’re welcoming places where people can gather,” he said. “I’m pleased as punch that we accomplished this.”
Reach Max Marcus at mmarcus@recorder.com or 413-930-4231.