WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senator Gary Peters (MI), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, announced on Friday that the Senate has passed a bipartisan package of six bills to partially fund the government through Fiscal Year 2024, including $2.1 million in funding for the renovation of the former Mercantile Bank in downtown Ionia to be the new home of the Ionia Community Library.
As previously reported by the Daily News, the recently formed Ionia Community Library Foundation is working to raise money to move Ionia’s library from its current confines in a historic mansion to the former bank building on Main Street.
“The Ionia Community Library and the ICL Foundation thank Sen. Gary Peters for making Ionia one of Michigan’s priorities, and for supporting the ICL’s goal to provide our district with the building that can supply all of the library and community services our citizens need and deserve,” read a statement issued by library officials on Friday evening. “A lot of hard work remains to raise all the needed funds before the project can begin, but the $2.1 million Congressionally Directed Spending award is an excellent start to the drive.”
“We are not sure of the details of the federal award yet, and it could take awhile to learn,” ICL Director Dale Parus wrote Friday evening in an email to the Daily News. “(Sen. Peters’s West Michigan Regional Director Peter Dickow) indicated that paperwork might take a long time based on his experience with the process. Fundraising by the Ionia Community Library Foundation is active now.”
The library is currently housed in the Hall-Fowler house, constructed through 1869-1870 and a Michigan Historic Site since 1992. While the two-story Italianate mansion is a beautiful, historical structure, it’s only 5,500 square feet and shelf space is so limited that every time the library adds a new book, staff must find another title to cull. Floor plans for the library’s new location in the old bank include a community room, study rooms, separate areas for children and young adults, a large room for programming, a play room, a conference room, restrooms, offices and a staff break room.
Ionia library officials have repeatedly tried to get a bond passed in order to relocate the library, but have failed six times in about 20 years.
The legislation announced by Sen. Peters on Friday also includes provisions supported or led by Peters to protect the Great Lakes, upgrade critical infrastructure, support veterans, and bolster domestic manufacturing. The package of bills now heads to the President’s desk to be signed into law. Once the package is signed into law, Congress must work to pass the remaining six appropriations bills on a bipartisan basis.
“As a member of the Appropriations Committee, I fought to ensure that Michigan’s priorities received the resources they need, and that this bipartisan legislation will boost our economy, support our veterans, and keep our country moving forward. The critical resources included in these bills show just how much we can do for the American people when we work together in a commonsense, bipartisan way,” Peters said in a statement.