Built in 2007, Paid For on Opening Day

2007 · 120 N. Michigan St

The present Lakeville Branch building was built in 2007, and it was completely paid for on the day it opened. The fact stands on the system's own officer's public testimony: Deborah Futa, then the library's Assistant Director, told the South Bend Common Council on 22 October 2012 (minutes read first-hand): "A township branch opened in 1999 it was completely paid for on the day it opened. Lakeville Branch built in 2007 was also completely paid for on opening day." (The 1999 branch of the same sentence is, on the system's history page, the Centre Branch.) Two more carriers fix the year from inside it: a dedication notice dated 17 October 2007 ("Congrats to all my former colleagues at SJCPL for the planning, building and dedication of the new Lakeville branch… loads of pictures of Dedication Day festivities" — a former colleague's post; its photographs were not pulled); and a 2007 Tribune summary quoting Director Don Napoli that within the first month of opening the new Lakeville branch library in Union Township, usage went up 104 percent. Futa's own retirement notice (31 January 2022) closes the loop from the system's side, crediting her involvement in "construction of the North Liberty, Lakeville, Francis, German, and Centre Branches." The evidence reached describes a new building built for the branch — planned while the branch still sat in the school in 2006, built and dedicated in 2007 — not a conversion; the building's formal facts (architect, cost, square footage, an exact opening date) are not carried by any source opened and bank as a named gap on the board minutes and annual report of 2006–2007. No expansion or renovation of the building between 2007 and November 2026 was found on the system's public pages — a searched negative, printed at that strength; the system's own revitalization plan places Lakeville in its future cohort, in the branch-today article below.