Rendering courtesy of Sawyer Free Library 2025.
Three community banks have made charitable donations totaling $1.5 million toward the renovation and expansion of Gloucester’s library.
The Sawyer Free Library has a fundraising campaign underway to raise $28 million toward construction costs for the new library, which is expected to open in 2025.
Newburyport-based Institution for Savings donated $1 million toward the campaign.
“The seven-figure gift underscores the bank’s business outlook that success extends beyond profitability, growth rate and brand recognition, and further demonstrates its goal of effecting social change with its corporate values, practices and profits,” the $4.5 billion-asset Institution for Savings said in a joint statement last month with the Sawyer Free 2025 campaign.
The total project cost of $28 million includes built-in inflation costs through the project’s completion in 2025, the statement said. The Sawyer Library Foundation, the campaign’s fundraising arm, said it had raised $14.3 million as of last month in pledged donations and grant awards.
“The design principles of Sawyer Free 2025 are grounded in the human experience and an ambition to put people first,” the statement said. “The newly renovated and expanded Gloucester Lyceum and Sawyer Free Library will stand as a model for what a 21st century civic hub can and should be in terms of architecture, accessibility, sustainability, the use of natural resources and light, layouts, lines of sight, air quality and public safety.”
The $839 million-asset Cape Ann Savings Bank donated $250,000 toward the campaign. Cape Ann Savings Bank President Marianne Smith said in a separate statement that its gift would fund construction of an all-ages digital makerspace inside the new library.
“Sawyer Free Library’s mission of being a place of learning, creativity and innovation that nurtures and develops the community is much like the long-standing, community-based mission of Cape Ann Savings Bank,” Smith said. “The library is one of Gloucester’s treasured gems. As such, we are pleased to be able to contribute to its renovation and modernization. We’re also excited to follow the progress of the Sawyer Free 2025 plan to equip the building with technological advancements, new methods of learning and ground-breaking ways of sharing ideas and information.”
The $341 million-asset BankGloucester has also donated $250,000.
The library last week received a provisional construction grant from the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners for $9.03 million. Gloucester was one of seven communities to receive library construction grants last week totaling $50.2 million last week.
In addition to the digital lab, the new facility will have a sound studio, a film studio and a 110-seat community meeting space. Sawyer Free Library said it will see a 25 percent increase in both annual visitors and the number of monthly public programs offered by the library. The library will also see a 50 percent increase in the number of programs that partner agencies host at the library.
“This is such an important project for the City of Gloucester, the residents, the schools and the many non-profit organizations who have partnerships with the library,” Institution for Savings President and CEO Michael Jones said in the statement. “This project, when completed, will establish the library as a state-of-the-art hub for innovation, history, learning, arts and culture – right in the heart of Gloucester. We are thrilled and honored to partner with the Sawyer Library Foundation on this initiative and we graciously challenge others in the community to step up and help make this vital project a reality for the people of Gloucester.”
