By Scott Taylor,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Scheduling problems and delays on the Lewiston Public Library’s $2.7 million renovation will keep work going for another month at least.

“I hate to say just when it will be done,” Director Rick Speer said.

Contractors say they should finish work on the new entrance at Lisbon and Pine streets by July 19. Library staff will close for a day around then to move the circulation department back downstairs to the first floor.

New shelving and furniture for the library is scheduled to arrive in mid-August. Once it does, the library will close for a week while staff reconfigures everything.

The grand opening of the new cultural arts center isn’t scheduled until October.

“So as long as we finish sometime soon this summer, I think we’ll be OK,” Speer said.

Construction began in March 2004. It was originally expected to wrap up earlier this year, but a delay in getting granite columns to support the first floor storefront delayed work several weeks.

Speer said tight schedules among the many subcontractors are to blame for the current delays.

“You get pretty tight scheduling windows, and missing one affects others,” he said. “Before you can paint, you need to have the Sheetrock done. But before you do the Sheetrock, you need to have the electrical work finished. You need to schedule everything in advance and they’re all so busy, it makes it easy to miss a window.”

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.