Sterling Ranch Breaks Ground on $21.7M Library — But Roxborough Loses Its Own

Douglas County Libraries broke ground this month on an 18,000-square-foot regional library in Sterling Ranch, a $21.7 million project that will eventually replace the roughly 5,000-square-foot leased branch that has served Roxborough Village for 22 years. The new facility, expected to open in summer 2027, is designed to serve a fast-growing swath of northwest Douglas County that officials say has outgrown its current civic infrastructure.

The library sits on a roughly 3-acre parcel at 8285 Piney River Avenue near West Titan Road and Taylor River Circle, directly across from a planned Douglas County School District elementary school, according to CBS News. The land was donated by the Sterling Ranch Development Company and was master-planned to allow the branch to expand up to 30,000 square feet as the surrounding population grows, per The Douglas County Lantern. Douglas County Libraries hired Englewood-based Fransen Pittman General Contractors to build the project and Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based OPN Architects to design it, with construction expected to take 12 to 15 months following the groundbreaking, as reported by CBS Colorado.

What the New Branch Will Offer

The finished library will include five reservable study rooms, two conference rooms, an event hall, interactive children's spaces, a terrace, a plaza, and a children's garden, according to CBS Colorado's report. It will also feature a drive-thru book return and 84 dedicated on-site parking spaces, along with spaces intended for either community connection or quiet reflection. Construction is expected to take about a year, and the article notes the project follows the district's typical approach of setting aside savings to fund new and improved buildings without taking on debt.

Amber DeBerry, Douglas County Libraries' director of community engagement, told CBS Colorado that public libraries function as “a creative third space” and serve as hubs for research, imagination, and finding community. She said children and literacy are central to the mission, noting that “books should reach children as young as possible,” and added that ensuring every child in Douglas County can get a book is one of the library system's top goals.

Explosive Growth Driving the Project

The push for a larger branch stems from Sterling Ranch's rapid expansion. As of early 2026, the 3,400-acre master-planned community had recorded a 6.68% annual growth rate with more than 3,000 residents and ranked as Colorado's top best-selling master-planned community, with long-term plans calling for 16,000 homes, according to Douglas County Libraries. Population in northwest Douglas County overall is projected to grow by 50% to 100% by 2040, and library officials warned that without a new facility, usable library space per resident would have shrunk to just 0.15 square feet, per The Douglas County Lantern.

Douglas County Libraries' board of trustees approved the project's budget and contracts in 2025. The $21.7 million budget covers site development and building construction, furniture, fixtures and equipment, and fees, permits, insurance and contingencies, and is funded through a combination of the district's capital savings fund and the Sterling Ranch land donation. Across its seven locations, the library system circulates nearly 6 million physical and digital items annually and distributes more children's materials than any other library system in Colorado, per Douglas County Libraries. An economic return-on-investment study by the Library Research Service at the Colorado State Library estimated that every dollar invested in the district generates $5.02 in returned economic and community value, according to Douglas County Libraries.

Roxborough Residents Left Uneasy

Not everyone is celebrating. The new regional branch will replace the leased Roxborough library, which has operated for 22 years, and that transition has drawn opposition from Roxborough residents who worry about losing a walkable civic hub, according to CBS News. Designed as a regional facility, the Sterling Ranch library is meant to serve multiple unincorporated and master-planned communities across northwest Douglas County, including Sterling Ranch, Roxborough Park, Roxborough Village, Louviers, Chatfield and Solstice — areas that CBS News notes currently lack dedicated municipal buildings of their own. Library services may be transitioned from the current Roxborough location, per the CBS Colorado report, though for residents who have relied on that smaller branch for more than two decades, the prospect of a longer drive to a larger, centralized facility is a real trade-off against the promise of expanded resources.

Part of a Bigger Sterling Ranch Build-Out

The library groundbreaking lands amid a broader wave of public investment in Sterling Ranch. Douglas County commissioners approved contracts in April for the $65 million Zebulon sports complex, a 46-acre project nearby that will include ice rinks and a 160,000-square-foot indoor turf dome, as per Hoodline. Together, the library and sports complex reflect a pattern in which Douglas County is racing to build civic infrastructure to keep pace with Sterling Ranch's population boom, even as it forces difficult decisions about which existing community assets get left behind.