Jack Cohen, president of the Butler County Tourism & Convention Bureau, answers a question from the audience during a special meeting regarding the Mars Area Public Library on Thursday, May 2. William Pitts/Butler Eagle
ADAMS TWP — The building at 145 Grand Ave. in Mars currently houses a NexTier Bank branch. In a few years, that address may be the new home of the Mars Area Public Library.
Residents of both Mars and Adams Township packed the Adams Area Fire District hall on Thursday, May 2, to learn the future of their library, one of nine in the Butler County Federated Library System.
Representatives from both municipalities unveiled tentative plans for a combination library, bank and discovery center in the space which currently holds Mars’ NexTier branch.
Borough Mayor Gregg Hartung said there has been discussion about moving on from the current library location for “at least a dozen or more years.”
“The library's outgrown itself to some degree,” Hartung said. “It’s the third-most used library in Butler County. Parking is an issue.”
The idea for a “discovery center” came as a result of the borough’s growing collaboration with NASA, which started in 2015 with the first Mars New Year’s celebration. The discovery center would showcase science, technology and engineering, and would play a part in revitalizing the borough.
Mars first received a $1 million Redevelopment Assistance Capital Project grant from the state of Pennsylvania in 2019 for the discovery center project. However, as part of this grant, Mars needed to put up $2,000,000 in either money or property as a match.
Sometime in 2020, Hartung and township supervisors chairman Russell Ford met and hatched an idea.
“We could combine the two things together ... the NASA center and the library, all in one,” Ford said. “Adams Township will put up the $2,000,000 so that (Mars) can get the $1,000,000.”
Over the next few years, both municipalities looked at multiple potential properties. Finally, they settled on the location of the former Mars Bank building on Grand Avenue, which had recently been acquired by NexTier Bank. The property, which includes the famous Mars spaceship sculpture, had recently been appraised at $2.8 million, and the bank was looking to sell it.
Instead, both municipalities struck a deal for NexTier to gift the property to the borough for a 25-year period. In return, Adams and Mars would lease the property to NexTier for $1 per year and give the bank 1,500 square feet of the property for a new bank branch.
“We have a lot to offer in this town, in this area,” said Jan Balentine, the former chairman of Mars Bank. “I just think that when people start coming into Mars, they’re going to love it. We need something like this to bring Mars and Adams alive. And so we're really, really excited about it.”
“When we do this building in the town of Mars, it's going to have the vision of being there for 100 years,” Ford said. “It's going to be the kingpin of the town of Mars.”
According to Ford, the fire hall was chosen as the meeting location for symbolic reasons.
Years before the fire hall was finished and opened in 2016, a Mars Bank drive-through branch stood on that location. The fire hall project began in 2012 with construction work starting in 2014, and today the Adams Area Fire District is in the middle of a 100-year lease on the space, for which it is paying $1 per year.
“The reason we wanted to have it here is I want you to see what the community built,” Ford said. “One of the things we wanted to do tonight was celebrate the dirt ... celebrate the deal.”
While there were a few critical questions about how the project would pan out, the majority of the crowd showed appreciation for the project. Ford said the event was mainly intended as a celebration of how far the project had come.
Adams Township board of supervisors chairman Russell Ford, left, and Scott Foreman of Hampton Technical Associates present concept sketches for the new Mars library and discovery center during a special meeting on Thursday, May 2. William Pitts/Butler Eagle
During the meeting, Ford repeatedly cautioned residents that the plans displayed were still tentative, and that they could change at any moment. He also mentioned it would be several years before those plans came to fruition.
“I think we could move as fast as anybody really wants to move, but we don't want to move too fast,” Ford said. “What we feel like we really need to do at this point is take a deep breath and start the planning.”
Preliminary sketches call for an entirely new building which would rise three or four stories tall, although a four-story building would require a special zoning exemption to rise above 35 feet. The new NexTier branch would take up most of the first floor.
The project would require demolition of the old Mars National Bank building, which has been a Mars landmark for over a century. NexTier Bank would move into a temporary space to serve its clients until the new building is finished.
As for the current library, Mars borough council president G. Michael Fleming said it would most likely be put up for sale.
A large audience packs the Adams Area fire hall for a special meeting regarding the Mars Area Public Library on Thursday, May 2. William Pitts/Butler Eagle
Jim Dionise, former president of Mars Bank, addresses the crowd during a special meeting regarding the Mars Area Public Library on Thursday, May 2. William Pitts/Butler Eagle
Adams Township board of supervisors chairman Russell Ford, left, and Mars borough council president G. Michael Fleming address the crowd during a special meeting regarding the Mars Area Public Library on Thursday, May 2. William Pitts/Butler Eagle
