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Ten years and several setbacks later, the Board of Trustees of the Schenectady County Public Library is realizing its dream of expanding the central branch on Clinton Street.

Construction on a 6,700-square-foot addition is expected to begin before January and be completed in about a year, said trustee President Ester Swanker.

The two-story addition has an estimated cost of $2.6 million, said library Director Andy Kulmatiski. Bids will go out in September and be opened in October, giving library officials a truer picture of the cost, he said.

The work will involve a minimal disruption of services at the central library, basically just knocking out a wall to connect the two structures, Kulmatiski said.

The addition will be built on county-owned land containing library staff parking, east of the central library and stretching toward the Schenectady Police Department headquarters.

The library board, which administers the county library system, has raised approximately $2.5 million in donations and through grants for the construction. The county, which owns and operates the library system, will contribute $1.5 million toward the project.

The county has already spent approximately $2.2 million to upgrade the central library's original operating systems. Further work includes installing handicapped-accessible bathrooms and an elevator. The central library was built more than 40 years ago and has not been physically changed since.

Local architectural firm Re4orm Architecture designed the contemporary structure. The front will feature a two-story-tall wall of clear glass, the sides of opaque glass supported by pre-cast concrete buttresses. A two-story "monolith," using bricks taken from the original library when the structures are connected, will front the structure.

"I am exhilarated about it," Swanker said. "I love the wall."

Kulmatiski said the addition will not clash with the central library's "iconic" design. "It's mainly glass. It uses clear, energy-efficient glass along the front and energy-efficient, opaque glass along the sides that diffuses the light," he said.

Swanker said the addition "meets all of our needs. Our circulation has increased significantly [topping 1 million in 2007] and we are getting more usage not only of the whole library but of the computer section."

The addition's first floor will house the children's section; the second floor will have meeting rooms. Library officials will use the former children's room space in the central library, some 3,000 square feet, to expand collections of new and popular books.

"We're doubling our children's space. We have a great need for that," Kulmatiski said. Swanker said the current children's room is used as a pass-through section to other parts of the library.

"It is difficult for librarians or any staff to do programming over there and it has a lot of cubby holes for children to hide," she said. "It is not an ideal situation. We want to make ours [children's room] the best possible."

Schenectady County Legislator Gary Hughes, D-Schenectady, said library trustees led the design process. "The county sat down with the trustees' building committee and worked out the library's programmatic needs and what they would need to add," he said.

"We worked collaboratively with them"

The two parties did not always see eye to eye on the project, however. More than a year ago, trustees threatened to split from the county and create their own taxing jurisdiction to operate the system. They were unhappy with attempts by the county Legislature to micro-manage their proposal to build an addition to the library, something they began pursuing approximately 10 years ago.

When a county-sponsored design would have required the central library to be closed for a year, many in the community became upset, and donors to the library construction project threatened to pull their money out.

The county and the trustees then abandoned the project and the trustees decided to develop their own expansion design committee.

Reach Gazette reporter Michael Lamendola at 395-3114 or lamend@dailygazette.com.