The Power of Choice: How Flexible Library Master Plans Can Serve a Growing Community

What if your community didn’t have to choose between a modest renovation and a transformative new build—but could thoughtfully plan for both? At BVH, we believe that empowering communities with a flexible library master plan—one that accommodates incremental upgrades and bold transformations—isn’t just good planning. It’s a powerful act of civic imagination.

Designing for Now and Later

Today’s library systems face a growing challenge: how to stay relevant amid evolving technologies, shifting demographics, and unpredictable funding. In this landscape, the most resilient master plans don’t point to a single solution. They offer a range of futures.

That’s what we call the power of choice.

Rather than prescribing one fixed path forward, a flexible master plan presents a framework of options—each grounded in community input, cost modeling, and design feasibility. It allows decision-makers to start small or go big. To act now and dream forward.

A Case in Point: The Columbus Community Building

One of the clearest examples of this approach is the Columbus Community Building in Columbus, Nebraska—a shared civic facility that houses the city’s public library, city hall, and children’s museum under one roof.

This wasn’t simply a new library. It was a reimagining of public service at the civic core—a vibrant, modular, and adaptable building that reflects 21st-century library values. The design process offered the City of Columbus multiple paths: renovation, addition, or entirely new construction. The city ultimately selected a transformational option—but only after carefully weighing each scenario alongside its stakeholders.

The result is a facility that includes a business incubator, a family living room, teen spaces, maker labs, and an “Idea Box” for community display—all designed to flex with changing needs and growing programs.

And crucially: it all began with a choice-based plan.

A Master Plan Is a Decision-Making Toolkit

Across our work in Holdrege, Pender, Lincoln, and Central City, Nebraska, we’ve learned that no single solution can—or should—answer every community’s needs.

Instead, we create choice matrices that present phased, scalable investments such as:

Option A: Strategic renovations to extend the life of existing buildings.
Option B: Targeted expansions to meet modern needs.
Option C: Full-scale transformations—new builds or co-located civic hubs.

This method empowers cities to plan across time—adapting to budget realities without compromising vision. Each option is grounded in real data, community feedback, and long-term sustainability.

Why Flexibility Matters

A flexible master plan helps communities:

• Phase investments without losing sight of the big picture.
• Design spaces that shift over time, adapting to changing technology, demographics, and services.
• Align stakeholder priorities, offering room for compromise, creativity, and momentum.
• Embrace community voice, integrating feedback from surveys, youth workshops, and cultural partners into the design process.

In Columbus, the city’s desire for a welcoming civic identity led to the inclusion of a literal “front porch”—a flexible outdoor space that now connects the library, museum, and coffee shop. This simple, powerful gesture grew directly from community visioning, and now serves as a physical symbol of belonging​.

Community-Driven, Data-Backed Design

We’ve seen, time and again, that the most successful plans are not just for the community—they are with the community. Through stakeholder interviews, pop-up engagements, and collaborative design charrettes, we co-create plans that reflect a community’s identity and aspirations.

Our approach mirrors findings from national research, including Gensler’s “New Model for the Public Library” which underscores the importance of social equity, personalization, and flexible design​.

Flexible Doesn’t Mean Indecisive—It Means Empowered

Too often, public projects are presented as binary choices: build or don’t. A flexible master plan disrupts that either/or mindset. It opens space for iteration, for dreaming, for recalibration.

It doesn’t delay decision-making—it enhances it. It invites boldness and responsibility to coexist.

Because when a community is given choices—clear, data-driven, and aligned with its values—it gains more than a building. It gains agency. And that’s the foundation for a truly future-ready library.

Let’s Design for Community, Together

Our vision as designers is to transform lives by creating places that contribute to the vitality of communities. We believe in making the world better through design.

Let’s design for choice. Let’s design for change. Let’s design for the community.

If you’re ready to explore how flexible planning can empower your community’s next chapter, we’d be honored to help.