The repair work at 7140 Bodega Avenue is meant to reopen a building that Sonoma County Library's 2019 Facilities Master Plan recommended replacing. That is why the mold closure matters beyond this fall. Every dollar going into the walls now restores a branch of roughly 10,000 square feet. The Sebastopol City Council has also agreed to reconsider, in December, a separate question it set aside in September: whether the library, the Senior Center and City Hall belong somewhere larger.
The short-term news is simpler. A limited library counter is open again in the building's Community Room.
What the Community Room offers right now
Sonoma County Library resumed its Library To Go service on Monday, October 19, 2026, in the Community Room at the Sebastopol Regional Library. The main building is still closed. According to the branch page, the counter offers:
- Holds pickup and BiblioBox service
- A browsing shelf of new and "Lucky Day" materials
- A self-checkout station
- An exterior book return
- Staff help at the service desk
- Wi-Fi outside the building
Hours are Monday, Tuesday and Thursday from 2 to 6 p.m., and Wednesday, Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. It is closed Sunday.
Before the counter opened in August, a third-party environmental safety expert tested the Community Room independently and cleared it for use. The library has also said it would run off-site programming at Ives Park while the building is closed. Talks about using space at the Sebastopol Community Cultural Center were still underway when the closure notice was posted. The library's events calendar has listed programs such as Babytime at the Sebastopol Community Center Youth Annex. It is the place to check for story times and clubs, since some sessions have been canceled.
For a while this summer, Forestville filled in with extended hours. The Press Democrat reported that those hours ended August 9.
The walls held more than the first openings showed
The timeline helps explain why a limited counter is still the arrangement more than four months in.
- June 4. Staff noticed peeling wallpaper in the Staff Work Room and Teen Reading Area, and the library closed the building to the public. Wall openings the next day exposed mold inside the wall cavities.
- June 15. The City's testing update said elevated airborne mold showed up only in the two rooms where walls had been opened. Non-invasive tests found elevated moisture in wall assemblies throughout the building, which raised the chance of hidden growth elsewhere.
- July 7. The council authorized Phase II remediation for up to $175,000. The library agreed to cover half of Phase I's $47,687.55 cost, according to the Sebastopol Times.
- August 26. ServPro finished remediation and clearance testing. A City staff report later said more moisture-affected areas than expected had added work and time. Crews found Stachybotrys and dry rot in the framing of opened walls. Common areas did not show elevated airborne mold.
- September 15. The final Phase II cost came to $173,196.22. Staff recommended a $74,250 reconstruction contract with DMR Builders plus a $14,850 contingency, with a 45-day construction period after award. Staff also moved the longer-term siding, grading, drainage and building-envelope work into a future capital improvement project.
That last step marks the line between this fall's work and the bigger job. The reconstruction contract repairs the rooms that were opened. The work that addresses why water got into the walls is scheduled separately, as a later project. The Press Democrat noted in mid-September that no timeline had been given for a full reopening. The library's October 19 notice says the building remains closed and does not include a reopening date.
Why repairing the old building won on cost
A full temporary relocation would have taken library service out of the building entirely. Library Director Erika Thibault explained why that didn't happen. In the Sebastopol Times account of the July meeting, she said temporary library moves elsewhere had cost $400,000 to $1 million. She called roughly $200,000 for repairs "significantly more cost-effective" while the library plans for a larger facility down the road. The City's share of the repairs came from its Building Reserve Fund.
The same report described a councilmember questioning whether it made sense to spend on a building already considered undersized. That question carries into December.
The building under repair was already flagged as too small
The Sebastopol branch is roughly 10,000 square feet. Sonoma County Library's 2019 Facilities Master Plan said that "given the inadequacies of the existing building," it should be replaced with a branch of at least 20,000 square feet. The library has since adopted an updated master plan, accepted in 2022 to carry out Measure Y and its Reimagining Plan, so the 2019 figure is the earlier benchmark, not the current blueprint. Voters renewed the one-eighth-cent library sales tax as Measure W in November 2024.
The library is not the only crowded civic building in town. The Sebastopol Times described the Senior Center as similarly constrained, the Sebastopol Community Center as at permanent risk of flooding, and City Hall as small and due for a refresh. Those shared space problems led to the Building the Commons Committee.
The O'Reilly campus is the other option
The committee, chaired by Councilmember Stephen Zollman, spent a year looking at sites around town. It settled on the long-empty, three-building former O'Reilly campus on Gravenstein Highway North. Copperfield's CEO RM Horrell presented the numbers to the council on September 15. A campus housing the library, Senior Center, City Hall and a community cultural center would cost about $18 million, or about $20 million with renovations. He compared that with an estimated $36 million to rebuild the library alone on its current site. Vice Mayor Sandra Maurer questioned whether the $36 million estimate was too high and asked whether an addition at the existing library had been explored.
The financing questions were specific. According to the Sebastopol Times report on the meeting, City Attorney Alex Mog said IRS rules generally limit private use of a government-funded building to perhaps 5 to 10 percent of its square footage, and the committee's plan relied partly on commercial rent. He also said the city cannot take on debt secured by the general fund without voter approval. Mayor Jill McLewis noted that public ownership would remove the property from the tax rolls, which Mog estimated at about $26,000.
Location came up just as often. Planning Commissioner Jennifer Koelemeijer, who owns Gather on Main Street, argued during public comment that moving the library away from downtown would make services harder to reach. "The O'Reilly site is a place for most of us to get to only by car," she said, according to the Sebastopol Times. Senior Center supporters at the same meeting described long waitlists for classes and services. Public comment split evenly for and against the site.
Councilmember Phill Carter served on the committee and still supports the concept. He explained how he weighed the testimony in an open letter published by the Sebastopol Times:
"When that many neighbors tell me the downtown library is worth protecting, that outweighs my 80. That's how this should work."
What December decides
The committee asked the council for three things: $40,000 to $50,000 plus staff and attorney time for a fiscal and design review of the O'Reilly site, a formal letter to the Sonoma County Library Director seeking joint capital planning, and an advisory ad hoc committee to replace the existing one. The council voted 4 to 1 to grant none of them. It agreed only to reconsider an ad hoc committee in December, before the midyear budget review. Mayor McLewis was the lone no vote. That December review is expected to look at both the O'Reilly campus and downtown city-owned properties, so the downtown library site is part of the discussion.
The O'Reilly property hasn't waited on the city. The Sebastopol Times reported in August that the campus was being offered for $18 million and that its buildings could be sold separately. When the Community Room counter gives way to a reopened branch, readers will be back in a 10,000-square-foot library with dry walls. The December agenda will show whether the council takes up the question of a larger one.
Civic decisions like this one shape how a town works day to day. They also shape the questions buyers ask about Sebastopol's downtown and its north end. Mark follows these council meetings for clients across Sonoma County. If you're wondering how decisions about the library and the O'Reilly campus could affect your own plans, Mark Spaulding and The Spaulding Group can talk them through with you, starting with an instant home valuation.
