The new Hastings Community Center and Library is officially open | Noah Hertz, Jacksonville Today
Published on November 13, 2026 at 1:47 pm
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The new Hastings Community Center and Library is officially open to the public. After years of planning and work by St. Johns County, the library branch in the small unincorporated community has moved out of the former Hastings High School and into a brand new building.
The new library at 401 N. Main St. offers a dedicated children’s room and meeting areas, and its community center will offer services including a food pantry through the St. Johns County’s Health and Human Services Department.
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A Library of Things section even allows library card holders to check out games or a Dungeons and Dragons starter kit.
Library Branch Manager Brad Powell says the new digs couldn’t come any sooner.
The former Hastings High School will soon be a new campus for First Coast Technical College, but, in the meantime, Powell says the century-old building was showing its age.
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“I’ve been the manager here for 16 years. I think for 15, we’ve been working on a new location,” he says. “It’s a big sense of relief … We love our new building.”
St. Johns County hosted a ribbon-cutting Friday morning to celebrate the grand opening of the new library. Speakers included St. Johns County Library Advisory Board member Mel Longo. Kids and families quickly found the children’s room, and the circulation desk began checking out books just minutes after the library opened its doors for the first time.
Longo stressed the importance of Friends of the Library groups who fundraise for library branches, especially now that the passage of Amendment 3 could lead to a decline in library funding.
Longo said St. Johns County has just six library branches for its approximately 350,000 residents. Alachua County, by contrast, has 12 library branches for about 300,000 residents.
“I assume that everyone here today is here because they value libraries,” Longo Friday. “The only way to do that is for the people here to join the Friends of the Hastings Library.”
A new fixture of the Hastings community
Other speakers included the county’s Library Systems Director Debra Rhodes Gibson, who said the new building will serve an important role in the community as Hastings continues to evolve.
LaKeisha Chestnut runs Hastings’ Carter Academy, a Christian learning center offering pre-Kindergarten and child care. She says with the new library branch just up the street from her school, she looks forward to bringing kids to visit.
“This is a resource that we’ve needed, and it just gives the kids something out of the day-to-day that we provide,” Chestnut says. “We’re just excited about utilizing it and the children’s programming.”
The Hastings library branch opens Monday through Saturday at 10 a.m. On Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays the library closes at 6 p.m. On Tuesdays it stays open until 7 p.m., and on Saturdays it closes at 5 p.m.
The Health and Human Services office, which includes the food pantry, shares the same hours on Monday through Wednesday, but closes at 4 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays and is closed on weekends.
