This new Johnson County library under construction will replace the aging Antioch branch
The opening of a new public library building in Merriam is inching closer.
“It’s just going to be a really beautiful building,” said Elissa Andre, media manager for the Johnson County Library, of the library’s new $13.6 million Merriam Plaza Library, now under construction in Merriam. “We’re really thrilled to bring it on to the Merriam Community Center campus.”
The new facility, designed by Kansas City-based Dake Wells Architecture, is contemporary in style with an abundance of windows. It is being built just steps from the Merriam Community Center, which opened in 2020 in the 6000 block of Slater St. The library is scheduled to open in mid-2024.
“This building is really architecturally interesting,” said Andre. “We have these big light monitors on the roof that will let in all sorts of natural light and let people who are inside look up and see the changing Kansas sky throughout the seasons.”
For library patrons, the light monitors will provide interesting light patterns throughout the day. “The building will have a green roof and it’s going to be the first all electric building in the Johnson County government,” Andre said.
The building features a low-maintenance exterior covered in a dark gray öko skin concrete cladding. The slat-size panels can be individually replaced if damaged. An outdoor front porch space will be part of the design of the new library.
The main entrance will be opposite of the community center, just off a courtyard and located next to the parking garage. Andre said the library will have the traffic from the community center that will be able to walk straight over to the library and vice versa. “The library folks can go and exercise their minds at the library and exercise their bodies at the community center,” Andre said.
The new branch will include two meeting rooms, a large multi-purpose meeting rooms. A drive-thru for book and material returns and hold item pickups will add another level of convenience for library guests. The space will have an updated children’s and early learner’s literacy area, a variety of seating and work space options, as well as wireless audio visual components in meeting and study rooms.
The library’s new meeting room will be named after Alphonso and Mary Webb, a Merriam couple whose May 1948 lawsuit was the precursor to Brown vs. Board of Education. The couple, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of their sons, demanded that black students be admitted to the new South Park school, which had been built in Merriam.
“We really want to honor their contribution to the near history and civil rights as a whole, and their families involvement in the community by naming our meeting room after them,” said Andre. “We’re going to have our muralist add them into the community or the meeting rooms for one mural.”
Twenty employees who now work at the Antioch branch will relocate to the new, 15,000 square foot Merriam Plaza Branch, as will the library’s entire collection. At some point after the new library opens, the aging Antioch branch, which opened in leased-space in 1956, will be offered for sale.
Titan Built of Lenexa. began work in December 2022, after a groundbreaking in November 2022.
