Interim downtown library to be within city hall
Windsor’s downtown library will be soon be located inside the new city hall, announced Mayor Drew Dilkens on Monday.
The main library branch at 850 Ouellette Ave. has been sold to the Downtown Mission for $3.6 million with the building changing hands next June.
City officials have launched early discussions with St. Clair College to create a new joint permanent home for the library with college classroom space somewhere downtown, but it is anticipated an interim main branch will be needed for the next three to five years, Dilkens said.
Several sites were scouted out by the library board, but the new city hall offered the best choice, the mayor said.
“The library board is excited,” said Dilkens, also chairman of the library board. “We knew it would be a challenge to find the perfect space. After the team came through here, the board got excited about this with respect to a digital library and how it would function here.
“We have expansion space built here already — it’s vacant waiting for growth at city hall. So, to be able to use it immediately is fantastic. We think it’s a good fit.” The library will occupy 14,000 sq. ft inside the new city hall primarily on the building’s fourth and fifth floors.
The wide-open lobby of the new city hall will also be utilized by the library for guest speakers, special events or other public presentations.
A primary attraction to locating inside the new city hall was availability of state-of-the-art technology inside the building that fits well for connectivity for computers and mobile phones of users, said Kitty Pope, CEO of Windsor Public Library.
“This provides us a unique opportunity to re-envision our services for our customers,” she said. Retrofitting and moving costs for the main library branch inside city hall will add up to roughly $1.3 million, Dilkens said. Among other sites considered included the first floor of the Goyeau Street parking garage, which belongs to the city — but renovation costs for that site were estimated at $4.1 million, he said. By moving into city hall, leftover cost savings from the sale of the main library branch — of about $2.3 million — can now be used toward the new permanent library home, Dilkens said.
“We think this is the right choice for taxpayers,” he said. Serious discussions also took place for the downtown library to move inside the Paul Martin federal building, but that fell off the table just over a month ago when the provincial government announced it will provide $20 million toward a new University of Windsor law school inside the landmark building at 185 Ouellette Ave.
“That caused us to change direction quickly,” Dilkens said. “But (the Paul Martin building) was a location we seriously considered.” The new interim library at city hall is scheduled to open the day after the main branch closes next June to provide a “seamless transition,” Pope said.
There are roughly 700,000 visits annually to the downtown library branch, she said.
If the community embraces the presence of the library inside city hall, there will be some consideration given to maintaining a presence even after a new permanent home is selected, Dilkens said.