LEWISTON – Library patrons will find themselves squeezed for the next couple of months as a $2.7 million renovation enters its final phase.
The library will close for eight days Thursday night. Library staff will begin relocating the circulation desk, fiction section and magazines from the first floor to the second.
It reopens Monday, April 11. Patrons will find a tunnel guiding them from the Lisbon Street entrance to an elevator. They’ll take that to the second floor and all of the normal library services.
“It’s going to be awkward for a short time,” said Library Director Rick Speer. “It’s less than perfect, but it’s necessary for the time being.”
The library will be open for the rest of the summer as crews scramble to finish work on the $2.7 million renovation project.
“We’ve been promised that they’re going to be out of here on June 10,” Speer said. “But the work is at a point in the construction that they need to really start moving stuff around on the first floor. And we need to be out of the way.”
The library has been using the computers database to make sure no books are due during the week the library is closed.
“We just told the computer that week was an extended holiday just so we would have no books or videos due,” Speer said. The book drops at the front of the building will be open, however.
Patrons can also call the library at 784-0135 to request books. Those books will be dropped off twice daily at Lewiston City Hall, he said.
“Of course, Lewiston library card holders can use the Auburn Public Library, too,” Speer said. That library is currently located in the Auburn Mall
Monday, crews were installing the red oak floor in the third floor performance space. They should finish work on the cascading staircase this week. That will carry patrons from the new entrance at the corner of Lisbon and Park streets up to the performance space.
Crews are also working to finish a second-floor historical records archive. The city hopes to store historical records from the Franklin Co. and Bates Mill in a new archive there.
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