Rib Lake library breaks ground on outdoor space

Village board and library officials gathered on Monday for a groundbreaking ceremony at the Rib Lake municipal building for a new outdoor shelter.

The shelter will be used primarily for outdoor programs at the library while also serving as a picnic shelter for the community throughout the year.

“For as long as I can remember, whenever we’ve tried to do any program or activity outdoors, we’ve had to watch the weather, and have a rain date or back up plan,” said library director Tammie Blomberg.

“People using the playground have had the same issue. There’s no place for shelter from the rain, or sun. It can sometimes limit people’s use of our great community play area,” she said.

The Rib Lake Public Library has some money set aside for improvements or future needs, so they started looking for ways to use some of this to help benefi t the programming area, Blomberg explained.

Some ideas included purchasing a good quality party tent that could be put up when it was needed. However it was determined that wouldn’t be very efficient. “We’d either have to keep putting it up and taking it down, or risk it being blown down or damaged. We decided that if we built something, it would need to be a permanent building,” she said.

The library board then went to the village and proposed building a structure on village property. “They agreed that a picnic shelter was a good fit for the community, and gave us the green light to start working on the project,” she said.

A committee was formed of library board and village board members as well as community volunteers.

They came up with a design that will be 24 feet by 40 feet with an eight-foot storage area on the east side leaving a 24 foot by 32 foot space for programing needs. With the ceremonial groundbreaking ceremony on Monday, work is expected to get underway quickly with site preparation scheduled for this week and the concrete slab being poured over the Memorial Day weekend.

While the library, through donations made by community members, is the major source of funds for the project there will be additional funds needed for seating, electricity and to cover additional building expenses. Community members are encouraged to donate to the project with their time or money with a fundraising account set up at Nicolet National Bank. Donations may also be dropped off or mailed to the village hall. The picnic shelter will be located on the grassy area to the east of the basketball court. Village president Bill Schreiner said he expects the shelter will be used frequently and be able to be reserved through the village hall.