WESTON LIBRARY BREAKS GROUND ON EXPANSION
May 6, 2025
The Highly-Anticipated Project Encompasses Repairing and Restoring the 200-year Old Building,
Adding an Addition, Providing Fully-Accessible Spaces Throughout, and More
Ground breaking ceremony for Wilder Memorial Library’s expansion project was held May 6th!
Pictured left to right: Ted Reeves, Reeves Consulting LLC; Mark Blanchard, VIS Construction Consultants; Gene Palma, Library Trustee; Wayne Granquist, Library Design & Build Committee Chair; Fred Bellucci, Vice President of Estimating, Breadloaf Corporation; Jessica Clapp, Library Director; Barbara Lloyd, Honorary Library Trustee; Paul Wyncoop, Business Development, Breadloaf Corporation; Jim Linville, Town of Weston Select Board member; Deborah Granquist, Chair, Library Board of Trustees; Linda Saarnijoki, Library Trustee and Town of Weston Select Board member; Amanda Gregware, Project Manager, Breadloaf Corporation; Rusty Davis, Library Expansion Leadership Committee member; and Ryan Foster, Principal, Foster Architecture.
(Photo Courtesy of Mark Martins Photography)
Weston, VT, May 6, 2025 – Wilder Memorial Library (“library”) held a ground-breaking ceremony today to celebrate the beginning of its long-awaited building project to enhance and expand the library’s facilities and programs. The project will encompass repairing and restoring the 200-year old current building and adding a 1300 square foot addition, which will have fully accessible indoor and outdoor spaces for meetings and programs, restroom facilities, state-of-the-art technology, and quiet spaces for reading and work, as well as parking and scenic views down the West River. The timeline for the construction extends through February 2026.
“I am over the moon that our dreams are being realized,”said long-time Weston resident and Honorary Library Trustee Barbara Lloyd. “We have been trying to accomplish this for over 40 years. Finally, here we are!”
A community group founded the library in Weston in 1874, and it has been housed since 1909 in the current 740 square foot building. In 2022, community meetings and the writing of a Strategic Plan set the Library Board on a path toward developing the library as a center of community engagement in Weston. The community’s desires were clear: an expanded library with facilities and grounds that are inviting, comfortable, and accessible to all, with programming for all ages and space for gatherings and meetings.
Friends of the Weston Community (“Friends”), a local private non-profit group, purchased the neighboring Riverside property in 2023 and donated it to the town for the use of the library, providing the space for building expansion, septic facilities, and a park along the river to be used by the community and for library programming. The Library Board engaged Friends to plan and implement the building project, including raising money, hiring architectural services: Foster Architecture of Weston, engineering service: Reeves Consulting, construction consultants: VIS Construction Consultants, and a contractor: Bread Loaf Corporation of Middlebury.
A capital campaign committee began work in 2023, soliciting local donors and applying for grants. The Town of Weston has been generous over several years, contributing to a capital projects fund that will be used for the expansion and future maintenance. The Library also applied for and won a Capital Projects Grant from the Vermont Department of Libraries and the U.S. Department of Treasury, one of only fourteen libraries in Vermont to be awarded a grant. Events will continue throughout 2025 to celebrate the library’s future and to raise funds for specific items not yet funded.
“We are thankful to so many people for getting us to where we are today on this project: the many volunteers on the Library Board, the Selectboard, and the expansion committees, as well as our generous donors, all of whom believe in the importance of libraries to a free and democratic society and who believe, too, in the future of Weston and the library’s place in this vibrant community,” said Library Board Chair Deborah Granquist.
This project is supported by the American Rescue Plan Act Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund (CPF) administered by the U.S. Department of the Treasury as part of an award totaling $16.4 million for capital improvements to Vermont’s public libraries. It is one of 14 CPF projects overseen by the Vermont Department of Libraries. Learn more about these projects.