WINNSBORO – After voting in January against purchasing the building that houses the Ridgeway library, Fairfield County Council voted last month to present a revised lease to the owner of the building. That lease was more favorable to the county.
The Voice learned on Monday that the owner has rejected the proposed lease, and according to Fairfield Deputy County Administrator Laura Johnson, the county exercised its option to let the lease expire.
“The Ridgeway library will close June 1,” Fairfield County Library Director Eric Robinson said. “That will give us a month to get everything out of the building.” The lease ends July 1.
The number of visitors to the Ridgeway branch were very low, and Robinson said that was one of the reasons for council’s decision to not renew the lease.
“We were losing money and the longer we were there, the more money we were having to put into it. We had numbers, we just didn’t have great numbers,” Robinson said.
“Right now the library board is absorbing it all,” Robinson said. “But we are not going to leave Ridgeway in the dark. We have a few months to make some decisions. Once the building is closed, we’re going to let the Bookmobile cover the book part of it. And, hopefully, we’ll have a location for a book drop in Ridgeway, and I have a few more things in the works that might be helpful for them.”
