Burnhaven Reopens

Burnhaven is back. Monday morning, the Burnsville library reopened after nearly eight months of renovations.

It was a sight to behold for Brent Jacobson, a college student who was at the head of a substantial line of patrons waiting outside the front doors. The new, improved Burnhaven stood in stark contrast to the den-like atmosphere Jacobson remembered from his childhood. 

"It looks really nice — very airy, open, clean and bright. You see some remnants of the old but it does look new," said Jacobson, who frequents Dakota County libraries three or four times a week. 

Burnhaven was built in 1974. The last major facelift took place in 1995, said Nancy Wisser, the senior manager for a cluster of libraries located in Burnsville, Rosemount and Hastings. Burnhaven gets over 300,000 visitors in a typical year and by 2010 the building was beginning to show wear and tear.

"The county is really proactive about making sure its buildings get refurbished and refreshed but we get a lot of people in here and it takes a toll," Wisser said.

To revamp the aging building the Dakota County Board approved $2,276,000 in renovations, according to Joe Lexa, a senior project manager for the county. Wisser and others said that the library now has a completely new look. Prior to the latest renovation, the interior of the library was defined by naked, brown cinder blocks which have since been covered over by energy efficient insulation, dry wall and a lively paint job, according to library officials.

"It's a huge change," Wisser said.

Modifications to the library are not purely cosmetic, however. Burnhaven will soon be home to a licensing center that will open on site in the near future. The library also features an expanded computer lab and a state of the art automated return system that uses radio-frequency identification to check in materials and sort them without the aid of human hands. The books flow along a conveyor belt with a mechanism that reads the radio tag inside and divides them into bins according to type — nonfiction, fiction, children's books.

"It's pretty fancy," Wisser said.