EAST HELENA — The Lewis and Clark Library has had a branch in East Helena for about 25 years. For about 15 of those years, it’s been located in a building on Main Street. But leaders say that space is no longer meeting their needs – and now they’re a step closer to building a new home for the branch.
On Tuesday night, the East Helena City Council voted unanimously to move forward with a plan to use a piece of land in JFK Park for a new library building. City staff will now continue working with the library on the arrangement.
(Watch the video for a look at the current branch and the possible new site.)
Andrea Eckerson has been manager of the East Helena branch since 2019. She says, even in just the last few years, that they’re getting a lot busier.
“I remember when I first started out here, several days, we wouldn't have anything in our outdoor book drop – we now are full almost every time,” she said. “We have 30 to 80 people come through every day, and we had several days early on where there were 15.”
The current branch is just over 2,000 square feet, and architects determined the library’s needs call for a building more than four times as large.
Eckerson said the space constraints are obvious when they hold their weekly Wednesday story time events in the branch’s new community room. Those events have grown to 20 or 30 kids.
“They come in here and they sit on the floor and we have our story time, but then we have to rearrange everything in order to have our activity,” said Eckerson. “Trying to stand up and do any sort of stretching or singing or whatever, it's difficult to fit in here – especially if we're storing anything in here, which sometimes we are.”
When they put in a wall to create the community room, it eliminated a section of the library that had been designed for teens to use.
“It's just really imperative for them to have space,” Eckerson said. “They won't come to the library if they don't have space.”
With so much more space, the new branch could have more dedicated spaces like that. The new location in JFK Park would be closer to East Helena schools, and library leaders say there could be benefits in being adjacent to the park.
“There are a lot of libraries that are now building within park areas or right next to parks,” said Eckerson. “They utilize the space for concerts, for outdoor programing, for nature walks, for book clubs that you can walk along and do, all sorts of things like that.”
The current library is close to Main Street Park – but you have to cross Main Street to get there.
“The only thing I'd miss, I think, is being on Main Street,” Eckerson said. “It's just Main Street does not have any space. We have investigated that, and nothing worked for us. But otherwise, I love JFK Park, so I'm excited that that might happen.”
Project managers say it could take about 15 months to build a new library. If that aggressive timeline holds, a new facility could open in the fall of 2027.
