Jackson library’s future tied to courthouse access, advocate warns
File photo
More than a decade after Jackson County residents helped finance and shape what became one of the county’s most visible civic institutions, a longtime library advocate returned to the commissioners chamber Jan. 6 to issue a warning — decisions made now could quietly unravel what the community deliberately built together.
Mary Otto Selzer, a Cullowhee resident and former member of both the Jackson County Public Library Board and the Fontana Regional Library Board, delivered a detailed presentation tracing the origins of the Jackson County Public Library complex and the role the historic courthouse plays in its identity and function.
“I’ve been a member of the Jackson County Friends of the Library for over 20 years; I think actually since I since 2002 and at least for 15 of those years, I’ve been on the board for the Friends,” Selzer said.
Her remarks came amid ongoing uncertainty following the county’s decision to withdraw from the Fontana Regional Library system and growing concern among library supporters that future actions could further diminish the local library’s role.
Selzer said the present debate cannot be separated from the decisions made years earlier, when county leaders and residents confronted the decline of both the original library and the historic courthouse.
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“Both buildings faced challenges in the 1980s,” Selzer said. “Over the next 15 to 20 years, Jackson County leaders and community groups discussed these challenges with no resolution, while both library and courthouse structures continued to deteriorate.”
A proposed joint library facility with Southwestern Community College in 2003 was ultimately rejected after overwhelming public opposition, she said, prompting the county to explore alternatives centered in Sylva and rooted in community input.
“Over 160 people attended a presentation at the Balsam Center,” Selzer said. “There were 36 community speakers, 33 of which opposed the plan and asked the county to please consider locating a library in downtown Sylva.”
That public engagement, she said, continued through a formal needs assessment and service priority study that included residents from across the county and shaped the size, layout and purpose of the eventual facility.
“The library breathes new life into our beautiful historic courthouse,” Selzer said.
The solution adopted by commissioners in 2007 did more than preserve an aging building. It deliberately fused the courthouse and the library into a single civic space, one that incorporated courtrooms, rotunda space and former offices into areas for meetings, exhibits and public gatherings.
“A 20,000-square-foot two-story addition was added to the historic courthouse,” Selzer said. “A two-story glass atrium connects this historic treasure to the new construction, creating additional community space for folks to gather, for exhibits to be shared and for performances to be enjoyed.”
The project’s success, she said, depended not only on county funding but on a massive grassroots fundraising effort that asked residents to invest directly in the library’s future.
“This would be one of the largest community fundraising efforts in Jackson County to date,” Selzer said.
Residents responded, she said, from children bringing in coins to major foundation grants, raising more than $1.8 million for furnishings, equipment and collections.
“Folks with deep roots in our beautiful mountains and newcomers alike all shared common sense of purpose and vision to breathe new life to this historic courthouse and to incorporate it into our community’s library,” Selzer said.
The guiding principle of the project, she told commissioners, was captured in a phrase that remains etched into the library’s identity.
“This complex is honoring the past and embracing the future,” Selzer said.
That vision, Selzer warned, is now at risk if the courthouse spaces that anchor the library’s community role are no longer accessible to library patrons or programming.
“The complex without access to spaces in the historic courthouse is not the entity that the community asked for and gave their time, talent and money to make a reality,” said Selzer, who believes removing those spaces would fundamentally alter the purpose residents paid to create.
“Without the historic courthouse, spaces available to Jackson County Public Library patrons and the community, the library will no longer function as a center of lifetime learning and community engagement,” Selzer said.
Selzer concluded by directly urging commissioners to preserve that original commitment by maintaining the legal and functional connection between the courthouse and the library.
“So I ask Jackson County renew the lease related to the Jackson County Public Library complex to continue to meet the community’s needs and expectations,” Selzer said.
Commissioners did not engage in extended discussion following the presentation.
The concerns raised reflect a broader anxiety among library supporters that the county’s withdrawal from the regional library system may not be the final step in reshaping public library services. For Selzer, the issue is not nostalgia but accountability to the residents who built the facility with clear expectations about what it would be.
Her message was simple and pointed: the courthouse is not an accessory to the library but part of its foundation, and separating the two risks severing more than a lease.
