You may have noticed Denver Public Library's Central location on Broadway has been under construction for a while. Update: It's still under construction.
Denverite reader Todd Engdahl recently wrote us, asking: "When will the Central Library renovations be finished, if ever?"
Same, Todd, same.
DPL's latest projections have the building opening sometime in the next year.
"We're optimistic work will finish in the first half of 2024," DPL spokesperson Joe Gosalvez wrote us. "After that, we have a lot of moving and organizing to do to get our spaces ready for the public."
The library system is spending about $60 million on the renovations, over half of which came from the Elevate Denver bond, which voters passed in 2017.
Construction crews removed the old (and often broken) escalators from the main hall and replaced them with regular old stairs. They renovated the elevators. They've added some new meeting rooms, space that anyone can use. The bathrooms have already been remodeled to be better "trauma informed," Central director Rachel Fewell said, and she's noticed customers really appreciate the new design that allows for more "personal space."
Central's open sections are also brand new: a high-ceilinged event space that can be sealed off from the rest of the building for after-hours events, and a children's library that drips with color and whimsy. A teen space is planned for the floor above the kids' area, but it's still a construction zone.
Customers are ready for a reopening. You know who else is? Librarians.
Gosalvez said the construction has made a significant impact on central's customer base.
"Circulation has decreased at [Central] by approximately 80% from 2019 to 2022," he said. "The construction, and the pandemic, have had an impact."
But the drop hasn't meant less work for librarians. Fewell said her teams have been busy adapting to the ever-changing landscape of concrete mixers, wires and wood. They've been shuffling stuff around to keep materials accessible as spaces close, change and reopen. When we spoke last week, they were prepping for a water shut-off, which meant they had to ask the Denver Art Museum if they could use their bathrooms for a little while.
"We cannot wait for the building to be fully reopened, and to have no construction happening," Fewell told us. "It can be very challenging to work in the building."
Her staff has been super flexible, she added, and they are glad crews replaced the building's elevators early in the process. The new equipment has made it easier to truck books up to storage and down to customers during the prolonged closure. Plus, she added, nobody's gotten stuck in them since they were replaced. There used to be "frequent entrapments," she told us, which may have made Central an outsized contributor to the eight-or-so people who get stuck in lifts every day in Denver.
"They were well beyond end-of-life, so it was so imperative that we got it done early," she said.
While Central's elevator crisis is over, librarians like Fewell and customers like Engdahl will have to keep waiting for work to fully finish. Fewell said library nerds should look out for parties to commemorate the end of this messy era.
"We will definitely celebrate with the public," she said.
Related:
What's on Central's roof? It's a roof!
There's a new Westwood branch on the way (and you can help name it).
The Ross-Cherry Creek branch is still closed (and people are still sad about it).
The Ross-Barnum branch could get a new name.
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that eight people get stuck in elevators daily in Denver, not 80.
