Cashmere Library will move to Riverside Center

CASHMERE – The Cashmere Library will soon have a new home at the Riverside Center in Riverside Park.

Last week, Cashmere City Council members voted unanimously to move the library from its current location on Woodring Street to the Riverside Park building.

"We're ecstatic," Cashmere Branch Librarian Lisa Lawless said. "We love the idea. We love that we can move into the Riverside Center."

Friends of the Library member Nancy Fike has been going to the Cashmere Library for 27 years and joined the Friends group about a year ago.

"I joined it because I had recently retired, and it really opened my eyes to the things that the library does, which is so much more than books," Fike said. "I mean, so much more." 

"Especially (library employees) Lisa and Ashley," she said. "They are always doing some kind of activity, so many crafts, they have meetings, they have a murder mystery night, and they squeeze it all in this teeny little space. Plus their actual back room, if you want to call it that, is just overflowing, I mean toppling on top of that, so they definitely need more room."  

The Riverside Center will offer more room, more parking, and outdoor space as well.

Lawless said the new building will give the library a chance to grow and expand their programs and what they can offer for free to the community.

Parking and space are limited in the library's current location. 

"So some programs I can't do here at the space that we're in because there's not enough parking, and my space is just not big enough," Lawless said. "Whereas in the Riverside Center, I will have access to that outdoor courtyard and a park."

"There's just a lot more parking (at the Riverside Center)," she said. "And we have very little parking here at this library and we've had attendance to some of our programs, you know, we have like anywhere from 40 to over 100 people attend our programs and there's no place for them to park here. So it really makes it difficult."

"I love the idea of it being right up against the park like that and having an outdoor patio area," Fike said. "So you can get your book and go outside and read, or you can take a walk and come back into the library. It's such a great spot." 

The Riverside Center was originally intended to be a community center but has not been used in that capacity, Lawless said. 

"The community hasn't had the opportunity to, they have to pay a lot of money to be able to use that space at this point, but with the library there, I feel like that's the closest that we can come to for it to be exactly as the people in this area wanted it to be originally," Lawless said. 

With the library there, the community will have access to the building six days a week, year-long.

The community will have a chance to provide input on what they want the new library to offer and what they want it to look like.

NCW Libraries is investing $10 million in 29 of its community libraries through the Reimagining Spaces Project. The project seeks to ensure that all of the libraries are safe, accessible, and welcoming and serve the diverse communities of North Central Washington.

A key component of the Reimagining Spaces Project is community input.

The Cashmere Library was already scheduled for a refresh as part of the project. However, now the investment in the library will be put into the Riverside Center location. 

"The NCW Libraries board has approved $487,367 dollars for our reimagining project at Cashmere," said Tim Dillman, Executive Assistant-Special Projects for NCW Libraries.

Plans for the move are in the beginning stages. Before the move is made, there will be a time for community input. Then, designers will use that input to design the layout.

"The way the building is put together it lends itself to lots of different kinds of designing for making separate spaces for children like a children's area, separate space for an adult area, separate space for a teen area," Lawless said. "You know, and I'm hoping, a separate space for programming and events."

"Our timeline has not been fully established yet, but typically, our projects take from 12-16 months," Dillman said. "This includes the staff training, community engagement, design work, public bidding, construction, and move-in."  

"We'll be working with our Cashmere staff and the City of Cashmere to set a start date for our two months of community engagement which will be the very first step in making the new Cashmere library a reality," he said.

"I feel like this is really a one-time, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our library to upgrade, you know, have a huge upgrade because the money that North Central Washington Libraries is going to put towards the remodel and the furniture and all of the inside components of our library, that doesn't come around too often," Lawless said. 

"That money that's coming in to be put into our library, that's like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have that huge of an upgrade," she said.

Quinn Propst: 509-731-3590 or quinn@ward.media.