CORNISH — After almost two years of study and debate, voters here will be able to weigh in on whether to accept the gift of a new, more accessible library at Town Meeting.

Representatives of the town’s library trustees and the Connect Cornish Initiative, a nonprofit group, presented a proposed warrant article to the town Selectboard on Thursday. The article asks whether voters will accept the former Cornish General Store, fully renovated into a library and community center.

“There are so many needs in Cornish that could be fulfilled by this building,” Laura Cousineau, one of the town’s library trustees, said in a phone interview. In addition to providing more room for books, children’s programs and other materials and activities, it would have a kitchen and meeting space that could be used for gathering outside library hours.

Regardless of the potential benefits, the library proposal has become a point of division among Cornish’s 1,600 residents, as some in town would rather see a store return to Cornish Flat than put a library where the store once was.

“I think a store is more important,” Bill Gallagher, a former Selectboard member and longtime Cornish resident, said in an interview.

Supporters of the library plan are holding a series of neighborhood gatherings to talk to voters about what is shaping up to be a consequential decision for a small town.

The proposal

Cornish resident Colleen O’Neill has owned the store building since 2016. It had been closed since 2013 when she purchased it, and an effort to reopen it as a store by an independent operator failed in 2018, after about 18 months. It has been mostly empty since.

The library trustees approached her about using some of the space in 2021, and O’Neill suggested she donate it as a new town library. The town created a Library Exploratory Committee in July 2021 and the committee studied both the proposed new library and what it would take to renovate the existing George H. Stowell Free Library, which opened in 1910.

The proposal worked out by the Library Exploratory Committee and endorsed by the library trustees works like this: If the town votes to accept the proposal, O’Neill will give the property to the nonprofit Cornish Community Initiative, which would raise money to renovate the library.

The CCI would have until March 2028 to raise the money and complete the renovations, at which point it would hand the renovated building, ready to host a library, over to the town as the Cornish Library and Community Center.

While construction is estimated to cost a little under $2.4 million, the CCI will raise all the funds through private donations, and O’Neill will donate the property.

If voters reject the proposal, Cornish would still have the Stowell Library, which the library trustees have been studying on and off since 2000. The building doesn’t comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and the town would need to acquire land from an abutter to put in a well and septic system. It currently has a composting toilet in the basement.

It’s also small, with little room to expand collections and hold meetings or programs. A plan to renovate it would cost an estimated $2 million and would have to be paid for through a mix of donations, grants and public funding through a bond issue or taxation. Even renovated, it would still be less than half the size of the proposed new library, and a proposed expansion would make it only about two-thirds the size of the new library, according to the Library Exploratory Committee’s report, which was delivered to the Selectboard in November.

“The trustees felt it’s just not a good use of taxpayer money,” Cousineau said of renovating the Stowell Library.

The current library is the most used building in town, Cousineau said, and a larger library, with seating and meeting space, would likely have many more visits.

The larger space would make it easier to accommodate seniors, as there’s no senior center in town, and teens who don’t have a place to go after school. Since the library would be on one level, it would be easier to make it accessible to people with disabilities. It also has its own parking lot, and O’Neill has had new water and sewer systems installed.

There also would be more room for books and other materials. “We won’t have to throw out a book every time there’s a new book,” Cousineau said.

The counter-argument

Though it closed in 2013, reopened for a year and a half then closed again in 2018, the sign for the Cornish General Store is still affixed to the front of the building, and some residents would like it to stay there. Bringing a store back to the space would keep the property on the tax rolls and would bring back what had been the town’s main social crossroads, Gallagher, the former Selectboard member (and father of current board Chairman Dillon Gallagher) said.

“I think the store could play a vital role as a local food hub and as a general store,” Bill Gallagher said.

Asked who would run the food hub and store, Gallagher said “townspeople.”

“I think we should have a good library and a good store, both,” he said. “We’re not poor.”

There are five other good libraries nearby, he noted, though there are at least as many stores, including Meriden Deli-Mart, a busy store, sandwich shop and gas station, just 3½ miles up Route 120.

O’Neill said in a phone interview that she’s not optimistic about the prospects for the store. People who have approached her about using the space weren’t planning to open a general store, she said.

Without gas pumps, it’s hard to keep a small store going, and there’s no place for them at the Cornish store, she said. And with the local worker shortage, keeping a small business open is harder now than it was in 2018, when the store closed.

Further, “I think the pandemic has changed the way people buy things,” O’Neill said.

Public discussion was cordial, but a pall of suspicion hung over Thursday’s Selectboard meeting.

Cousineau asked the three-member board if they’d be willing to sign the petition for the warrant article and to endorse the proposal. Board members declined, with Frank Parks, the newest member, saying “as far as being a flag-waver for or against, it’s a moot point, ... because it’s the taxpayers’ decision.”

There’s an open house from 10 a.m. to noon on Jan. 28 at which Cornish residents can inspect both the current library and, perhaps, the future one.

“I think it would be a wonderful asset to the community of Cornish,” O’Neill said, calling it, “a place to build social capital.”

If approved, maybe it would bring the town together.

Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.

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