Library Board continues steps to clarify vision for Hoosier Desk project

The Jasper Library Board of Trustees continued to work through the steps necessary to have a decision in front of taxpayers in November for the creation of a cultural center at the Hoosier Desk site.

Earlier this month, the board and Jasper Community Arts Commission met in a joint meeting and decided to seek proposals from other developers for the project. The project is relying on $3.42 million in tax credits to lower costs and has to have a private corporation involved to receive those credits. How that developer will work in the project is still up in the air, but the design created by CityVisions included private cafes and a restaurant as well as a housing component. (Story here)

The tax credits the library was awarded are for a project that encompasses the library and Jasper Arts Department portions. If the developer decides to build housing, they would need to add that aspect to the project to receive Industrial Recovery Tax Credits for the increased cost.

CityVisions parent company City Property Group has agreed to fulfill the project’s needs as the developer and private component to obtain the tax credits. However, the two groups decided to advertise the project to see if any other developers would be interested. Since that meeting, the project has been advertised in Indianapolis, Evansville and Jasper and, according to the board, they have had some responses.

A committee was assigned to vet those responses and any others that come in before the February 1 deadline for a decision to be made in March.

Board president Dean Vonderheide accentuated that the design CityVisions created last year does not necessarily represent what will be done to the property. The actual design is expected to occur after the referendum decision. “That is not the design, that was a conceptualization by a company that was hired to give us some possibilities about the potential to make this work,” Vonderheide said. “We are entertaining a schematic so we can see how this could work with the arts, the library and the private entity. We don’t need to spend a lot of money on that going into the referendum.”

As the group muddles through the confusing issues of financing, partnerships and tax credits, it has to develop a cost to present to the public for the referendum. Attorney Bill Shaneyfelt pointed out that the taxpayers will simply want to know the impact on their annual property tax bill. At this point, the referendum is simply about the amount of money the library will present to the public to build the library.

“It is overly complex, but we are going to want to try to simplify it and explain that here is what the bottom line is,” Shaneyfelt said.

One point that could impact the final amount on the referendum is the potential for fundraising by the library and arts. With fundraising efforts recently announced by the City of Jasper for The Parklands, the library is wondering when the public bucket of funding could dry up. “I am starting to get anxious,” Vonderheide said. “We have talked about the tax credits a lot but we haven’t talked about the raising funds much.”

To begin to direct those efforts Vonderheide and Library Director Christine Golden plan on meeting with the Dubois County Community Foundation to plan the next steps in fundraising.

In doing so, the board acknowledged they will have to continue to develop a clear story for the public to understand their efforts to create a new library in Jasper.