Library construction leads way to future


County Commissioner Tommy Hester, Sen. Elizabeth Dole, Embassy Square Foundation Executive Director Kathy Powell, Mayor Clem Seifert and state Treasurer Richard Moore prepare for the placement of the first steel beam toward the end of the construction celebration ceremony Friday afternoon.
County Commissioner Tommy Hester, Sen. Elizabeth Dole, Embassy Square Foundation Executive Director Kathy Powell, Mayor Clem Seifert and state Treasurer Richard Moore prepare for the placement of the first steel beam toward the end of the construction celebration ceremony.

It was a gray day, an April Fools’ Day, and it was a beautiful day for all involved with Embassy Square.

Several hundred people, from city employees to YMCA campers, crowded into the courtyard in front of the police station along torn-up Breckenridge Street early Friday afternoon to join the Henderson government, the Embassy foundation and Sen. Elizabeth Dole in celebrating the construction of the 40,000-square-foot H. Leslie Perry Memorial Library.

“I hope that this April Fools’ Day 2005 will prove … that the only people who were fools were the skeptics and the naysayers who said that either we couldn’t afford this library or shouldn’t have,” said Bennett Perry, who spoke as chairman of the library’s board of trustees. That statement was one of many answered by resounding applause during the ceremony.

The event was held on the north side of Breckenridge, across the street from the construction site where contractor H.G. Reynolds is due to erect the two-story library by December. Library director Jeanne Fox said the new building should open to the public in late February or March.

Dirt and heavy equipment are the highlights of the site at Breckenridge and Chestnut streets where the library is due to rise this year.
Dirt and heavy equipment are the highlights of the site at Breckenridge and Chestnut streets where the library will be.

On the south side of Breckenridge, there wasn’t much to see. Parking lots that open to Winder Street are complete but aren’t visible from Breckenridge now because of mounds of dirt and lots of construction equipment. Actual building construction hasn’t begun yet. And Breckenridge, the street that connects the privately financed south side of Embassy Square (library, gallery and performing arts center) to the north side (police station and, as planned, a city hall and administrative building), simply isn’t there right now.

Hundreds of people listen to Mayor Clem Seifert at the start of the construction celebration.
Hundreds of people listen to Mayor Clem Seifert at the start of the construction celebration.

But the police courtyard was immaculate, featuring flowerbeds that were planted and mulched Wednesday. And the mere fact that the ceremony was outside was a victory after forecasts called for thunderstorms at 1 p.m.

Mayor Clem Seifert expresses gratitude that the threatened rain did not arrive, allowing the show to go on at Embassy Square.
Mayor Clem Seifert expresses gratitude that the threatened rain did not arrive, allowing the show to go on at Embassy Square. The sun even poked through the clouds for a few moments in the middle of the ceremony.

“God has been good to us in so many ways, and he’s held the rain off of us,” said Mayor Clem Seifert, who opened the ceremony by welcoming the helium-balloon-holding crowd on behalf of the City Council, city employees and City Manager Eric Williams. City offices, like the library, closed for the ceremony to allow more people to join the celebration.

(The Rev. Rick Brand of the First Presbyterian Church, who gave a poetic invocation, and the Rev. Joseph Ratliffe of Shiloh Baptist Church, who delivered the benediction, did not have the monopoly on references to God.)

Those people had to use a lot of imagination to envision how the library will look — an effort assisted by artistic renderings of the future Embassy Square buildings — but such a vision of the future was a common theme Friday.

Sam Watkins and the Rev. Rick Brand flank Embassy benefactor Minerva McGregor.
Sam Watkins and the Rev. Rick Brand flank Embassy benefactor Minerva McGregor.

“This project started with a dream, and it began when Minerva McGregor stepped forward. … Minerva got this project rolling,” Seifert said, thanking her for donating land and $1 million. The McGregor Hall gallery is part of the current phase of Embassy construction.

Thanking people was the heart of Seifert’s speech, in which he laid out the important elements of the public-private partnership that made Embassy Square possible.

“Small towns don’t survive without public-private partnerships,” Embassy Square Foundation Chairman Sam Watkins said.

“There are so many people who will probably never get the credit that they deserve for making this project happen,” Seifert said.

He did his best to counter that problem. He praised Watkins, the “bull dog” behind the project, as well as City Council members past and present for five years of necessary decisions; former Mayor Chick Young, who was “absolutely instrumental in pushing this project forward”; current and former state legislators Jim Crawford, Stan Fox, Michael Wray and Doug Berger (Wray attended the ceremony); state Treasurer Richard Moore, “our own native son” and a late addition to the celebration; the Ferguson Group, the city’s Washington lobbying firm, which has helped land $2 million in federal grants for roads and construction; and all of the people who have represented Vance County in the U.S. House and Senate since 2000.

“I’d like for this project to be the gateway to our future, the gateway to lifetime learning, the gateway for people in this community to see the world,” Seifert said. “This is the project.”

Watkins said people in Vance County made a commitment to the future of the community when they embarked on Embassy Square, which required “a commitment to our biggest asset, our people.”

“We need new ideas in our community, and without projects of this type, that will not be possible,” Sam Watkins says.
“We need new ideas in our community, and without projects of this type, that will not be possible,” Sam Watkins says.

“It’s the greatest and largest project I think in the history of this community,” Watkins said. “At times I woke up early in the morning and said, ‘Sam, what have you gotten into this time?’ ”

But he said Henderson must have a complex like Embassy Square to revitalize the economy.

“We were told why we couldn’t do it,” Watkins said. “The people in this community stepped up.”

Now, he said, “this community is on a path that will lead us to greatness.”

“I sincerely hope that the decision of our community to get in behind this project and go forward with it now will prove to be the right move at the right time and that this will go down in history as a great and significant step forward on our voyage toward a better and more prosperous community,” Perry said.

Sen. Elizabeth Dole says, “Embassy Square, the Perry Library, which we celebrate today, will serve as a center for training the local work force.”
Sen. Elizabeth Dole says, “Embassy Square, the Perry Library, which we celebrate today, will serve as a center for training the local work force.”

Dole, who was introduced by the lone Republican on the Vance Board of Commissioners, Tommy Hester, said she believes Henderson is headed in that direction.

“Embassy Square and the city of Henderson will be a model for how rural communities meet the challengers of today’s world and work for a brighter tomorrow,” Dole said, concluding a speech that touched on the tobacco quota buyout, the strength of the military in North Carolina and the importance of community colleges.

“Downtown can truly be the heart of a community, and for some time Henderson has been a model of successful downtown revitalization,” she said. “Embassy Square will take your efforts to another level, enriching this community not just economically, but also culturally.”

Perry added a cultural touch when he cited Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” quoting a passage about “a tide in the affairs of men that taken at the flood leads to fortune.”

He said the $8 million library is all about developing a love of reading in children at an early age.

“I hope all this will enable them to expand their horizons beyond the edge of a television screen,” Perry said.

State Treasurer Richard Moore recalls his youth as an Oxford boy visiting the big city of Henderson.
State Treasurer Richard Moore recalls his youth as an Oxford boy visiting the big city of Henderson.

Moore, making a point about the past, present and future, said the old Embassy Theater expanded his horizons by providing big-city thrills when he was growing up in Oxford. He can’t wait for his children to be just as thrilled to come to Embassy Square.

“Some of the finest people in the world live right here,” he said. “And you can make excuses, you can complain, or you can move forward and put your best foot forward, and that’s what this project represents, and it will bring great days tomorrow.”

“Our project’s focus really is not about buildings, it’s about changing lives,” Watkins said.

He returned to the lectern to remind the crowd that the library and gallery are only Phase 1 of the cultural center. The construction celebration also marked the formal start of fundraising for Phase 2, the 1,000-seat performance hall.

The Embassy foundation needs to raise about $6 million.

“I can assure you the effort will be as strong as it was the first time,” Watkins said of Phase 2.

Balloons released by the crowd drift over the ceremonial first steel beam at the library site.
Balloons released by the crowd drift over the ceremonial first steel beam at the library site.

Almost lost amid the speeches was the ceremonial purpose of the day: the placement of the first steel beam in the library.

Workers for contractor H.G. Reynolds maneuver the ceremonial first piece of steel into place about 1:45 p.m. Friday.
Workers for contractor H.G. Reynolds maneuver the ceremonial first piece of steel into place about 1:45 p.m.

Two H.G. Reynolds employees secure the ceremonial first steel beam during the construction celebration at Embassy Square.
Two H.G. Reynolds employees secure the ceremonial first steel beam during the construction celebration at Embassy Square. The beam didn’t stay there long: After the applause died down, the workers unbolted the beam, and a crane laid it down in the middle of the construction site.

Foundation Executive Director Kathy Powell, whom Watkins praised for five great years of service and for organizing Friday’s celebration, brought out the hard hats and directed the crowd’s attention across the street to watch as a crane and two workers on the ground guided the beam into place and secured it, if only for a few minutes.

By the end of the ceremony, the cloud cover was as thick as it had been an hour earlier, but still the rain did not fall.

Seifert said it was appropriate that the day was cloudy because Embassy supporters struggled through some cloudy days in bringing about the library. “But I promise you one thing: The day that the doors open and the people go in it, there will be a ray of sunshine in this community. The sun will be shining down on this community. God will be continuing to bless us. With this project, we will see many, many sunny days in the future.”