What’s at stake?
The new temporary location at the Ted C. Wills Community Center will offer residents a library branch that isn’t at least a three-mile drive away.
After years of advocacy from residents, the Tower District is getting its own library branch.
Fresno County plans to open a location in Tower as soon as December, starting at a smaller, temporary site before finding a larger, permanent home, Supervisor Luis Chavez told Fresnoland.
That starting place will be at the Ted C. Wills Community Center in south Tower.
The $325,000 total investment is already covered under the recently approved $5.5-billion county budget and will go toward costs like equipment and tenant improvements, Chavez said.
A formal announcement will happen in late October, and Chavez expects the branch to open inside the community center anywhere from six to eight weeks after that.
“We’re hoping this could be kind of the community’s Christmas gift,” he said.
For Brooke Payton, who’s been fighting to get a library in her neighborhood for more than three years, it still feels like progress is moving at “light speed.”
News of the new temporary location comes just three months after Councilmember Annalisa Perea motioned to set aside $50,000 of the city budget toward working to establish a library in Tower, which is part of her council district.
Even though the community center space may be on the smaller side, Payton wants to see her neighbors “pack this place.”
“It’s about us getting that metaphorical foot in the door. It’s about us being able to say, ‘OK, we have a starter library,’” she said. “We need to use all of it, all of the time.”
Chavez said if the branch proves popular, it would help build the case for opening a larger, permanent location.
He’s already looking at potential sites for that along Olive Avenue, although he said “Phase 2” for the Tower library all depends on Measure B.
The one-eighth-cent sales tax, first approved by Fresno County voters in 1998, has served as a financial lifeline for the library, covering more than half the system’s budget in the 2025-2026 fiscal year. Voters last renewed the tax in 2012, and it sunsets in 2029 unless voters give it another round of approval come 2028.
Fresno County needs that money to establish a permanent location for the Tower library, Chavez said.
In the meantime, county spokesperson Sonja Dosti said in an email Wednesday that a permanent location “is not in our current inventory of pending projects.”
What’s planned for the new Tower library location?
Chavez said they’re looking at locations like the branch at the Mosqueda Community Center as a model for the one they’ll house at the Ted C. Wills.
Now that they’ve secured the location, Chavez said they’re working on preparing the space for visitors.
“We’re making some accommodations so that people with mobility issues can access it, people with visual and hearing impairments can also access it,” he said, “and I want to make sure that that library has books in various different languages as well.”
Payton described the neighborhood library as a community game-changer.
“The central branch is three miles away from the center of Tower,” said Payton, referring to the downtown location that’s now closed for renovations. “The Gillis branch is three miles away from the center of Tower. That is a long commute if you are going by foot, by bus, by bike.”
Payton also has a few spots in mind for where a permanent location would ideally go, including vacant lots on the corner of Van Ness and Home or Palm and Olive.
As for existing structures that could house the library, Payton called the long-vacant Chicken Pie Shop on Olive another “pie-in-the-sky” dream spot.
For Chavez, he has one primary goal in mind when it comes to finding a long-term location.
“I have a very simple criteria,” he said. “Are you able to see the Tower Theater from the Tower library?”
‘Ready to dive in headfirst’
Payton has been doing everything in her power to push for a Tower library over the past several years — even telling Drag Santa that’s all she wants for Christmas two years in a row at Sour Milk’s annual event.
But aside from being the Tower library’s No. 1 advocate, Payton also just loves libraries.
She teaches crocheting as a volunteer at both the Gillis and Fig Garden branches. She sits on the board of the nonprofit Friends of the Fresno County Public Library that helps fundraise for special programs at branches across the county.
Over a decade ago, Payton also became the founding president for the downtown Fresno library’s Friends of the Library chapter — something she wants to help set up for the Tower location, too.
The individual chapters help create a kind of community feedback loop to gauge neighborhood satisfaction with their library.
“It’s made up of community members that help their library branch,” she said. “It’s a way for voices in the community to advocate for themselves if they want to see something: You don’t have enough books in Hmong. You don’t have enough books in other languages,” she added as examples.
Although she has led a Friends of the Library chapter before, she’s hoping more residents will take the reins for a future chapter in Tower.
“This time around, I’m hoping that I have people who want to help me,” she said, “keep that going and growing.”
But volunteering in any capacity at the library is “well within her desires,” she adds.
“I’m ready to dive in headfirst.”
