LEWISTON – Work on the Lewiston Public Library’s $2.7 million renovation project is still on pace to wrap up this summer, but the completion date has been pushed back five weeks.
Crews have started installing granite piers that will support the first-floor storefront of the renovated Pilsbury Block building. That work was originally scheduled to be completed in March, but Library Director Rick Speer said it had been pushed back to April or early May.
He blamed the delay on the delivery of the granite piers.
“We never did get a satisfactory explanation about why they were delayed,” Speer said. “We just got word from a subcontractor that there was a delay of about five weeks.”
That will keep the sidewalks along Pine Street in front of the library closed until the granite work is done. The delay has pushed the ultimate finish date for the library back to June.
Other parts are moving along, Speer said. Crews have finished refurbishing the second- and third-floor brick face along the outside of the building and are nearly done installing the electrical system and the plumbing and hanging the drywall on the third floor.
The official grand opening is now set for September, he said.
“We didn’t want to plan anything too soon, just in case of other delays,” he said. “Another factor is that people are so busy in June and July, so scheduling a grand opening then wouldn’t be appropriate.”
The library is expanding into the rest of the Pilsbury Block at the corner of Lisbon and Pine streets, according to plans. The renovation will give the library an expanded fiction section, a first-floor lobby, a second-floor historical records archive and a third-floor meeting and performance space with room for 150 people. The city hopes to store historical records from the Franklin Co. and Bates Mill in a new archive there.
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