SPOKANE, Wash. — The Shadle Park Public Library (SPL) and the Liberty Park Library are preparing to reopen their doors November after years in the works.
The SPL and the Liberty Park Library are part of a $77 million project that is renovating four different libraries and building three new ones.
These projects have been in the works for years. The city designed all these libraries with help from the community that requested to have more open spaces for children's play areas.
Spokane Public Library Spokesperson Amanda Donovan said, "Children's play places were the number one requested item for the community when we were doing our community outreach prior to pacing the bond and that's like everybody wanted better children's libraries for the community."
The Hive Library at Sprague Avenue and the brand new Hillyard Library on Cook Street are already open to the public. The new Shadle Park Public Library (SPL) will be opening Nov. 4. and the Liberty Park Library in east central is opening mid November.
The new Liberty Park Library building include:
- Expand the size and the design of the Liberty library to reflect a sleek and modern aesthetic, maximizing westward views of the park. This space emphasizes a children’s zone, features a program space that is more than double the size of the existing meeting room at the current East Side library, and includes two new quiet study rooms.
The Shadle Park Library renovation expansion include:
- The expansion of the current locations to 30,000 square feet
- Improved children’s discovery area to impact early children’s literacy outcomes
- Improved areas for quiet reading and study
- Flexible use spaces for large or small meetings
Due to the pandemic, opening ceremonies for the new libraries have been small. The city has been doing and will continue to do small official ribbon cutting ceremonies to open the new libraries.
Even though the official opening of Liberty Park Library and Shadle Park Library aren't until November, the libraries are open for scheduling meeting rooms for those people who need to use the rooms for businesses meetings or for taking a class.
The renovation of these libraries is just the beginning of more projects to come. The Indian Trial Library and the South Hill Library will be closing down to start their renovation at the beginning of November.
For more information and updates visit the Spokane Library website.
