New library project enters next phase

Article Date: May 14, 2007

By Leonor Vivanco, The Sun

FONTANA – It’s the foundation that will help them reach for the stars.

The construction site downtown at Sierra and Seville avenues is more than cement and concrete.

Once crews are finished building the $60 million Lewis Library and Technology Center, it’ll be a learning center for residents both young and old.

“This community is growing and thriving, and educational opportunities really provide a future for everyone regardless of their backgrounds,” said Kathleen Fariss, library director of development.

“This project is really going to give the community a sense of pride that ‘look what we have here in Fontana, look what we’re going to be able to provide our future generations through educational opportunities,” she said.

Plans are to finish the library and open it in 2008.

Friday marks the “Topping Off Ceremony.” Library donors will sign the last steel beam to commemorate the projects’ literal “reaching of the sky.”

Over the past year, donors contributed nearly $15 million in a $20 million “Give Today to Enrich Tomorrow” fundraising campaign to help offset construction costs and provide materials and programs.

The library is the largest civic project in Fontana and will be the largest regional library in the San Bernardino County system.

It’ll be nearly five times the size of the existing 20,000-square-foot library.

“It seems rather cramped and the sections, like for instance the children’s section in particular, are very small,” said resident Kari Flanery.

The two-story, 93,000-square-foot library will feature a children’s library named for Martin Luther King Jr., a story-telling center, a homework center, a literacy center, a 330-seat auditorium, a rotunda, a clock tower, a cyber café, fountains and a coffee bar.

Resident Maria Valderrama, 26, liked the idea of having a cyber café.

“It’s really nice for them to do this for us, to get a bigger library with more variety of books and more computers available, not having to wait an hour (to) an hour and thirty minutes to get a computer,” she said.

The library is being paid for with state and county funds, the north Fontana bond issue and developer fees.