Now that the city-parish has closed on its purchase of a building at 3434 North Blvd., the East Baton Rouge Parish Library System can begin working toward moving its archives and data center to the facility.
“We can’t move in right away because we need to go ahead and get the building checked for asbestos. There’s no surprises or anything. This is an older building, and we knew we’d need to do the testing,” says Assistant Library Director Mary Stein. “If the testing shows asbestos, then we’ll need to take care of that, and then do some other minor things like fixing lights and leveling the floors to make sure we have a great foundation to move those book stacks in.”
Though the Metro Council gave the library’s board of directors authorization to spend as much $1.15 million for the building, the city-parish ended up getting it for $1 million, according to sale documents. The city-parish bought the building from Anthelio Healthcare Solutions Inc., a Delaware-based corporation represented by Lane Cates, the documents show.
The library system has been looking for a building for storage and to house its data center for quite some time, and the North Boulevard purchase came only after a previous deal to purchase the former Ethan Allen building on Florida Boulevard fell through. The library system also will use the building to house its collections used by area bookmobiles.
“It’s a very excited process,” says Stein. “It will take us a little time as we move through the various Department of Public Works offices to help us bring this project to fruition, but this was all factored into our timeline.”
—Steve Sanoski
