Gritters Library to close for reconstruction

In less than a month the longstanding Gritters Library branch in Northeast Cobb will be closing for good.

The Cobb County Public Library System announced the closing date on Thursday, two months after the Cobb Board of Commissioners finalized a $9.8 million contract for a rebuilding of the branch that’s also to include the Northeast Cobb Community Center.

The final day of service for Gritters is Saturday, June 17, with the doors shuttering forever at 5 p.m.

Both facilities are located at Shaw Park, and the new building will more than double in size from the present Gritters, to around 15,000 square feet.

Gritters patrons will be served by the Mountain View Regional Library (3330 Sandy Plains Road) during the closure. An estimated opening date for the new facility has not been announced.

Gritters opened in November 1973 in Shaw Park, built with funding from Cobb’s first library bond issue (that bond issue also funded the East Marietta Library, which was replaced by the Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center in 2019).

But as the surrounding community has grown—the library system estimates Gritters serves a population of 62,000 and nearly a dozen schools—the tiny branch has been overloaded.

The Gritters rebuild project was included in the 2016 Cobb SPLOST, with $6.8 million originally budgeted for the library and $1.2 million for the community center. Initially plans called for renovations, but county officials later determined that a complete rebuild was needed for the aging, outdated branch.

There was a groundbreaking event for the new Gritters in late 2021 after Cobb received a $1.9 million capital outlay grant from the Georgia Public Library Services.

But construction costs have soared since then, and efforts to start construction appeared to have stalled last fall, with a $2.5 million shortfall.

In March, county staff proposed filling that gap with $1 million in funding from the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act, $1.2 million for the community center from the 2022 SPLOST Shaw Park Repurpose project, and $719,000 in savings comes from 2011 SPLOST library projects and fiscal year 2023 library system capital projects.

Gritters will serve as a hub for CobbWorks workforce development programs. The ARPA funding included a $3.7 million earmark for CobbWorks, which was planning to expand into Gritters beforehand.

In addition to CobbWorks, Gritters has partnerships with the Northeast Cobb Business Association, SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives) and nearby higher educational institutions.

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