There’s a fenced playground in the library parking lot.
Turf surface, good sightlines so you can watch from anywhere, lots of climbing equipment, bathrooms and a water fountain right there, and easy parking because it’s the library’s own lot. A parent who reviewed the playground instead of the library called it a low-stress outing. That’s the highest praise any place gets from somebody with a toddler. Her one warning was that there’s minimal shade over the equipment, which in Florida is worth planning around.
Whoever put a playground in the library lot understood something plenty of planners miss. Parents stop going to places where their kids are miserable, and they keep going to places that make the whole family’s day easier. I’d call it the smartest use of a parking lot in the county.
What is West St. Petersburg Community Library?
A branch of the St. Petersburg Public Library System at 6700 8th Avenue North, in the western part of the city. The phone is 727-341-7199 and the branch page sits at splibraries.org. Eighty-nine Google reviews at four point six. It’s described consistently as small enough not to be intimidating and large enough to be useful. Clean, well organized, a good selection across all ages, internet computers, media, easy self-checkout and staff that parents describe as patient with children. The Pinellas Public Library Cooperative app is the thing regulars recommend. Find what you want, reserve it, get notified, collect it here. A branch this size works because the catalogue behind it covers the whole county.
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One family of four children has been coming for years and describes the staff as friendly, helpful and patient. That’s a long-term verdict.
Eight in the morning until eight at night
Free, quiet, and nobody waiting for you to order anything is most of the reason.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Twelve-hour days, four days a week. That’s the widest daily window of any library in this series, matching Seminole, and it’s unusual enough to be the practical reason to choose this branch over one closer to you. An eight o’clock opening serves people before work, before school runs, and anybody whose day starts early and has an hour to fill. An eight o’clock closing serves everybody else. Very few public buildings in this county cover both ends. The trade-off is the weekend. Friday and Saturday run ten until four, which is six hours, and Sunday is closed. So the strength here is weekdays, decisively. I’d happily swap a short Saturday for twelve-hour weekdays, though I’d be gladder still to see the city find the money for both.
The concerts
The branch runs free events and at least one of them was a full band.
A visitor described attending a free concert by a Brazilian jazz group at the library and called it awesome. That’s not standard branch programming, and it points to a building that treats its community room as something more than a place to store folding chairs.
Free jazz in a library is the sort of thing that makes me proud of a city. It takes somebody on staff with imagination to book a band into a community room, and they deserve a full house every time they do it.
For anybody looking for a free evening out, a branch library concert is an underused option. It costs nothing, it’s usually well attended by people who live nearby, and the acoustics in a library room beat a bar.
What does West St. Petersburg Library offer writers?
The hours, mainly, and they’re worth restating.
If you write in the early morning, the list of places in Pinellas County open at eight is very short. This branch and Seminole are on it. Everything else in the county unlocks at nine or ten. An hour at a library table before the day starts is a different kind of hour from one at a kitchen table. Free, quiet, and nobody waiting for you to order anything is most of the reason.
I think the early hour is the best-kept secret for anybody trying to write around a job. The first hour of the day belongs to you before anyone else can claim it, and a library table gives that hour a shape it never quite has at home. The other thing, for parents who write: the playground. Two adults can trade off, or an older child can be safely occupied in a fenced enclosure within sight of a window. That’s not a small thing if your writing time has to fit around a family. I’ve covered the county’s wider options across the Writing in Tampa Bay series.
When is West St. Petersburg Community Library open?
Eight in the morning until eight at night, Monday through Thursday. Friday and Saturday ten until four. Closed Sunday.
8th Avenue North runs across the western side of St. Petersburg, with the library’s own lot and the playground in it. From Clearwater it’s around twenty-five minutes, from the beaches ten.
Feed Your Imagination Comics is a few minutes away on Central Avenue, and Wilson’s Book World is a straight run east if you want fifty years of used stock in the same trip.
My take
Early risers who write around a job should claim a table here at eight. This branch and Seminole are the two places in the county open that early. The first hour of the day belongs to you before anyone else claims it, and a library table gives it a shape home never does. Parents who write get the fenced playground in the lot. Catch a free concert if you can. Somebody on staff booked a jazz band, and they deserve a full house.
Where it sits
The St. Petersburg branches each have their own reason to exist.
The Obama Main Library has the depth, the café and seven-day opening. Mirror Lake is the 1915 Carnegie building. North Community has the drive-through drop and a park next door.
West St. Petersburg is the early one, and the one with the playground attached.
For a household with young children and a writer in it, that combination is hard to beat anywhere in the county. If more branches opened at eight and thought about parents this carefully, I think people in Pinellas would write a lot more books. If more branches opened at eight and thought about parents this carefully, I think people in Pinellas would write a lot more books.
