The Nov. 8 election will decide more than who our president will be for the next four years.
For Jasper, Indiana, the general election vote will also determine whether or not the city’s Jasper Cultural Center project will get the funding it needs to move forward.
On the ballot in Jasper is a referendum to help fund the final portion of the Jasper Cultural Center. The proposed center would be a new building for the Jasper Public Library and Jasper Community Arts, to be located in downtown Jasper at Third Avenue and Mill Street. A “yes” vote would increase the median household property taxes $2.69 per month or $32.28 per year and will benefit the library portion of the center.
If the referendum is voted down, however, the project will have for forfeit its $3.4 million IEDC tax credits and nearly $4 million in individual and corporate pledges. The project as it currently stands end and the hunt for a new home for the library and The Arts will start again from scratch.
The cultural center project spurred from three independent actions between the city, the arts department and the library. In December 2013, the city adopted a downtown master plan that would look at more arts in the public realm, repurposing buildings and creating more connectivity with downtown Jasper.
Mayor Terry Seitz said Jasper Community Arts, the city’s arts department, embraced the idea and saw a location downtown in 2014 as part of the city’s future. At the same time, the library decided to renew its efforts to either adapt its currently location or engaged the idea of joining with The Arts in a potential downtown location.
Going forward with a shared space was a way to not only have the library and The Arts collaborate but also make the costs of creating the new space more affordable for taxpayers. Seitz said the cultural center efforts are an extension of a master plan that was adopted through the collective vision of the city and its citizens in the hopes of making Jasper better.
“In planning its all proactive. It’s coming together with our citizen who helped us tremendously in our master plan for downtown. We had 300 citizens at two different public meetings who guided us and said this what we see for our city,” Seitz said. “So this isn’t the mayor’s idea and wasn't really any staff’s idea. It’s playing off the input and then implement what the citizen have visioned. Once you have that vision and have that plan you look and say how can we implement that and that's how we came to today.”
The Cultural Center is projected to be up and running by mid- to late 2018. The Arts wing will consist of three new galleries, several workshop spaces, private studios, a dance or yoga studio, art lounge and an office area for the department's employees who will move to the center. The library will have space for all its collections, programming spaces, study rooms and staff areas. Both the library and The Arts will share the outdoor spaces such as parking and green space, the atrium and events space, catering kitchen and gift shop. There will be restrooms that are in the shared spaces as well as in each wing.
Kit Miracle, director of the arts department, hopes the center will be a community space where people feel comfortable coming regularly for programming or even to spend free time. With so many opportunities the space presents to the community, Miracle said the center will become pivotal component of downtown Jasper.
"(The project) is snowballing," she said. "I haven't seen this much excitement about a major project in quite a while."
The Cultural Center could give the Jasper Public Library a new home that its sought after several times before. The most recent effort was a referendum in Nov. 2011 that was voted down during the election.
The library has seen an increase in usage in recent years. According to library records, more than 265,000 items were checked out of the library with more than 147,000 being books in 2015. The library averages more than 400 visits per day and increases to more than 600 visits per day in the summer. A new location would not only help accommodate the library's growth but also place it in an area that will continue to develop in the coming years.
Although the process of finding a new home for the Jasper library has been a long and challenging process, Christine Golden, director of the Jasper-Dubois County Public Libraries, said they believe they only had struggle because it was leading to something better.
“This is what I believe is better and the best opportunity we have ever had to move forward as a library,” Golden said. “It’s been fantastic to see most of the community coming up and supporting us. I know we have done our best have factual information available for people so they are comfortable with us moving forward. This is the best plan for us.”