NORTHPOINTE SHOPPING CENTER: New library opens doors

North Las Vegas got a new library July 31, as the library district held a grand opening celebration at the new branch on Craig Road. This is only the second library in the city.

Library district director Anita Laruy had a simple explanation for the reasons the new branch went into the Northpointe shopping center at 4528 W. Craig Road, "economics."

Stan Wasserkrug offered the library six months of free rent and another six-months of half-price rent at his shopping center. The local developer also performed all the site improvements the library needed free of charge. Wasserkrug estimates his total donation to the library is about $140,000. "The people here have done a lot for us," he said. "They've been good to us, we wanted to be good to them.

"Anita is hard to say no to," he added.

Wasserkrug's company, Intercapital Development, owns about 11 shopping centers and office buildings in Southern Nevada as well as other commercial properties. He said this is the first time he's offered free rent to a tenant. "The opportunity to get the North Las Vegas Library in our building is a feather in our cap," he said.

The 4,500-square-foot branch is a full service library, though Laruy acknowledges that it lacks the main library's resources. The current collection tends toward reference materials and popular fiction, but that Laruy said will change. "We just got a $53,000 grant for new books," she said. "We'll be getting more every month."

One of the city council's longtime goals has been to add a library branch. The city has earmarked a parcel at Alexander Road and Martin Luther King Boulevard for a new, freestanding library, but Mayor Michael Montandon said the city lacked the funding to begin construction on that site. "This is a good intermediate step," he said of the storefront library. "These services are so drastically needed."

"With our population growth, we could use three libraries," Laruy said.

North Las Vegas resident Joyanna Diaz would agree. Diaz, who lives nearby in the Eldorado subdivision, said the new library was "wonderful."

"It helps our anti-cultural image," she said. "Having a library opening is like, 'See, we do have culture in North Las Vegas.' Its part of the infrastructure we need to compete with Summerlin and Green Valley."

The new library is open 10:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday and Saturday, the library is open 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.