AHOSKIE – As the NFL Carolina Panthers like to say, sometimes you just have to “Keep Pounding”.

That’s what the Ahoskie Library Board along with the library’s volunteers, patrons, and others have been doing in hopes of one day seeing a new library in the town.

That vision moved closer to reality Tuesday when Southern Bank presented the deed to a tract of land located adjacent to the current Southern Bank location on Main Street in Ahoskie.

Teresa Jenkins of the local Southern Bank branch made the presentation on behalf of her company; presenting the deed to Ahoskie Mayor Jimmy Rowe at the regularly scheduled meeting of the Ahoskie Town Council.

“Southern Bank is proud and honored to be able to help make Ahoskie’s vision for a new public library become a reality,” said John L. Heeden, Senior Vice President for Southern Bank. “Ahoskie and the surrounding communities in northeastern North Carolina are a cornerstone of the bank’s prosperity and success, so it pleases us tremendously to be able to reinvest in the community toward something that will benefit everyone in the area for generations to come.”

Two Ahoskie Branch Library Board members were present for the presentation along with the Ahoskie Library branch manager.

“One of the most important things about our library is that a lot of our patrons are foot traffic,” said Library Branch Manager Cindy Henderson. “This (new) site gives us an opportunity to have entrances on Main and Church Streets for a better traffic flow, and I’m sure we’ll be an asset to the area because we’ll be filling a space that will give Main Street a lift.”

Town Manager Tony Hammond has worked closely with the Library Board to bring the new facility to fruition. That includes meeting with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to secure a $50,000 USDA grant back in the fall of 2014. Several months later the town sought RFQ’s from three architect firms before settling on and accepting a bid from Oakley Collier Architects of Rocky Mount, designers of the current Ahoskie Fire Station.

“They’re still designing it,” Hammond said. “They haven’t finished that yet.”

The early design plans called for a 7,000 square foot building, later expanded to 10,000 square feet. Furthermore, Hammond has tried to help the Library group with interim financing. In the larger scope of grant funds, he said the state’s Local Government Commission (LGC) has to see the entire project once the designers have finished with the new library’s design and that could delay any ground-breaking. Once ground is broken, it’s believed the project would take approximately two years to complete.

There’s also the question of how much the town of Ahoskie would contribute to the project’s financing, and that’s being met with mixed results by the Town Council with some members’ vigorous proponents while some others are much more cautious. The Town Manager has stated, and made very clear to Council, there is very little chance, to none-at-all, that the library could be built without an increase in personal property taxes.

“Bottom line, it’s up to them,” Hammond acknowledges. “I can bring this back from the LGC, the LGC can approve this thing, I can get financing set up by USDA; and still, until Council says yes, this entire thing can be rejected.”

Library Board members are hoping as the town flexes its economic growth muscle there may be a way around getting an increase to finance the new library.

“We hope people will understand that if there is a tax increase, it won’t be because of the library,” Henderson says. “We serve so many parts of our community: continuing education, jobs and employment.”

Now that the town has the land, the Board hopes signage will soon be in place announcing the library’s future home. In the meantime – they’ll just ‘keep pounding’.