As Brad Allen, executive director of the Lawrence Public Library, looks to the future, he’s thinking about how to get champagne taste on a beer budget for the institution’s patrons.

Community partners, library staff and volunteers gathered Friday morning to discuss the library’s impending master plan.

Allen told the crowd that it was his job to translate the community’s unfettered brainstorming into financially sound realities.

“You could dream of big dreams — you gotta pay for it,” he said. “So I’m really interested in knowing what it is that people want and how we fund it and how we do that in a fiscally responsible way.”

The library is in the middle of devising its first master plan in two decades to shape the future of its building and offerings. LPL has hired New York City-based Margaret Sullivan Studio as the consulting firm for the project, and it’s released a community survey, asking patrons and nonpatrons alike to chime in.

Some of lead consultant Margaret Sullivan’s many preliminary suggestions to improve building design are to add more seating and to include more intergenerational opportunities for interaction. However, consultants, library staff and Friends & Foundation board members are still in the fact-finding stage of developing a master plan.

Craig Penzler, an architect and former member of LPL’s board of trustees, said they needed to address the elephant in the room: many people say they avoid the library because people who they perceive to be unhoused gather in and around the facility, including at the bus stop across the street.

“What we want to create is a place that’s safe for all,” Penzler said.

Penzler said the solution is not to kick people out of the library and eliminate couches, nor is it to move the bus station to attempt deflection. Rather, he suggested strong cross-community engagement and developing mutual understanding.

Allen said he’s talked to former patrons who feel that the library has been taken from them and that it’s no longer safe. He said many of the people he’s spoken to say that they support the library’s non-exclusion policy, and even feel shame for their fear.

“That’s maybe a place where you can have people move into discomfort,” Allen said. “Like, I told the person, I was like, ‘At the risk of upsetting you, tell me when you’re uncomfortable and when you’re unsafe. And if you don’t want to be uncomfortable, that’s fine, but understand the difference.’”

Cyndie Courtney, a veterinarian, workplace conflict consultant and wife of Vice Mayor Mike Courtney, who was also present Friday, said that the library serves vastly diverse groups and safety is going to look different to different communities. 

She expressed concern that Lawrence lacks third spaces — a community-building environment outside of the home or workplace — beyond the library where people can go during the day to receive centralized resources.

“Obviously there’s a bigger city conversation around third spaces and where are people allowed to exist,” she said.

Allen said the library has also faced ongoing challenges due to a lawsuit in which Justin Spiehs sued LPL for allegedly violating his freedom of speech. Spiehs is a known anti-mask protester who has also been vocal against vaccines, abortion rights, transgender people and local governance. A judge dismissed that lawsuit in March, but Spiehs has appealed.

According to Allen, the lawsuit has limited their ability to develop community partnerships. Once, he said, the library would work with groups like Kansas Legal Services, but the group has a social mission and stance that the library cannot officially take. As such, groups like KLS have to pay $50 per hour to use the auditorium space.

“These people will come and attack us, and we’ve had to retreat purely out of not getting sued and losing,” Allen said. “This is a huge problem, and we’ve had to pivot, and who we can be and how we can partner is radically different because we’re being attacked by provocateurs.”

Kansas Sen. Marci Francisco said she’d be willing to start a public fund, possibly through the Douglas County Community Foundation, where folks can donate to help cover the auditorium cost for possible partners that can’t afford it.

Attendees also considered how to reach folks who don’t engage with the library and lack knowledge of its services.

LPL has employed a veritable army of solutions to reach a community beyond the regulars who walk in the door.

Staff and volunteers have installed book dropoffs at grocery stores; maintained a 24/7 digital library and community resource guide; put a bookstore in the central transit station; and they frequently gas up Dottie, the traveling library van.

Many of those gathered on Friday agreed that a new branch building — although useful for outreach — is out of the financial question.

“I think we will need something to reach some of the more outlying parts of the community in a more full-service way,” said Annamarie Hill, chairperson of the library’s Friends & Foundation board.

Hill and other speakers thought a solution could be more pop-ups and offsite collaborative partnership.

Sullivan said they could attend community events, such as school programming, to reach non-users of the library for feedback on the master plan. Allen said they’re working on targeted social ads and even considered going door-to-door with the survey.

“We need to build a community norm that you show up, because there are powerful, powerful forces that are not interested in us doing that,” Allen said.

The library’s 10-minute survey is still open to the community at this link. Folks who fill it out will have the chance to win a $50 downtown Lawrence gift card.

Wulfe Wulfemeyer (they/them), reporter and news editor, has worked with The Lawrence Times since May 2025. They can be reached at wulfe@lawrencekstimes.com.

Read their complete bio here. Read their work for the Times here.

Molly Adams (she/her), photo editor, has worked with The Lawrence Times since May 2022. She can be reached at molly@lawrencekstimes.com.

Check out more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.

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