Ashburn residents have the evidence they are getting what they want.
Loudoun dignitaries broke ground for the Ashburn Library on a windy Saturday, using shovels to mark the site at Hay Road and Breezyhill Drive in Ashburn Farm.
"This site is attributed to people power," said Supervisor Eleanore Towe (D-Blue Ridge). "They wanted a library in their community and they wanted it now."
The library was originally scheduled to open in 2011 and receive funding in 2008, but Ashburn residents handed in petitions and pleaded with the Board of Supervisors to reconsider the project's placing on the Capital Improvements Project list. The library was bonded in 1999 and is scheduled to open eight years earlier in 2003 at a cost $6.2 million.
"This project is like an epic film, years in the making and casts in the thousands," said Douglas Henderson, director of the Loudoun County Public Library.
The 23,400-square-foot building will house 75,000 books and become the second largest library in the county. Located one block from Stone Bridge High School, the library is near a community complex with a community center, park, swimming pool and day-care center. The library will have the largest children's room of any of the libraries in the county, Henderson said.
"It's all here," Henderson said. "Now we'll be serving the largest unserved population in the county. .... They want these services that are easily available to them and accessible. They want these to be community-based services."
Henderson, along with representatives from the Board of Supervisors, the Loudoun County Public Library Board of Trustees and the architect and construction companies for the project participated in the groundbreaking ceremony.
Phillips Swager Associates in McLean designed the building, while Tucon Construction Corporation in Dulles is scheduled to begin construction the first week of April. The library is expected to open in May to June of next year.