KPL Foundation Funds NS Children's Room Remodel

Over the past few months, the User Experience Team and Youth Services staff have contributed their ideas to a plan to completely redesign the Northside Library's children space. We started with the question, "What do we want to do here?" We agreed on three different levels of activity: Collaborative, classroom, and discovery.
Here is the floor layout.

At the entrance we will build a modular power wall for new adult books facing the circ desk and a power wall for children's books on the opposite side facing the  new collaborative space. You will see tables and chairs meant to support team activities like homework, robotics activities, and other group projects for school age children. The children's nonfiction collection will be brought across the aisle to form a boundary wall for the space and a wider aisle for preschool parents to bypass the school age collaborative space and park strollers outside the glass wall of the discovery area.
The discovery area is designed for fiction readers and smaller children. There will be oversize chairs for parents and children reading together. There will be interactive wall mounted activities at toddler height. Fiction will be housed along the curved shelving in the middle of the room, with soft play pods and benches scattered between the shelving for children to cuddle up with a book. The seating along the window provides a natural space for parenting classes. And picture books will remain in the face front bins, painted in bright colors.
Finally, the children's story time room will get new flooring- washable flooring to encourage messy activities and a sink to allow cleanup.
This project represents a collaboration between public and private funding. $20,000 will come from the library's budget, $2,500 from a private donation, and $78,908 from the Kenosha Public Library Foundation. Our Foundation collects private donations and funds projects on our behalf throughout the year. Past projects include the Hannah Stocker room at Simmons, support for the Big Read, and funds for the children's book collection.
The first phase of our project will be painting all the walls within the new space. We are aiming to do that during the weeks when story time is not in session, starting May 18th. A team of artistic staff members will be convening to choose paint, fabric, and vinyl colors. Our new communications assistant will pull together a plan to keep the public informed and generate excitement for a grand opening around Labor Day.
We will work toward keeping children's materials always available to our guests during the project.
And finally, if you know any of these Foundation Board members, please thank them personally for their generosity. The children of Kenosha are going to be very happy with their new space!
Don Cress
Gina Madrigrano- Friebus
Pat Demos
Patty Mahoney
Louise Mattioli
Rosana Molinaro
Len Iaquinta (also on our Library Board)
Bill Althaus
Carol Heide
Jens Emerson
Tip McGuire