Oakland Takes First Steps Toward Long-Awaited Library Renovations

Nearly 15 years after Oakland first eyed a project to revamp the town’s public library, the borough is taking steps this summer to finally complete the process.

Voters approved a $2.6 million referendum in 1998 to expand the library, doubling the size of the 1936 building to add a children’s wing and a large meeting room. The project ran over budget and ended with litigation between the borough and Vintage Contracting, which was undertaking the work.

The new library wing—currently the only section of the building in use—opened in 2006, with the original structure seeing only a few lighting upgrades and no architectural work.

The historical structure, completed through the New Deal era Works Progress Administration, is closed to the public, cluttered with furniture in storage and scaffolding left behind from contractors.

“That building is on the town seal,” library director Abby Sanner noted. “It’s an identifying building of the town.”

The borough is taking steps to give the iconic building a facelift, pursuing exterior improvements to the building that will include a new paint job and repairs to the building's cupola, borough administrator Richard Kunze said. Bids are out on the project, and officials could not offer any estimates of the cost.

But remaining funding from the 1998 referendum, he said, will pay for the exterior repairs. The borough has around $330,000 remaining from the bond referendum, as well as $140,000 from a 2012 settlement with Vintage available for future improvements to the library.

The Library Growth Foundation, a nonprofit established in 2001 to fundraise for capital improvements to the library, is seeking to supplement that remaining fund. Upon its founding, the organization set a $250,000 fundraising goal, and by 2006 had raked in $170,000.

Mayor Linda Schwager, a former president of the foundation, said that the fundraising halted during the litigation involving the library that began around that time.

“We said, ‘People are not going to donate to a library that’s going nowhere,’” she remembered, but was hopeful that with exterior renovations showing progress on the library in the coming months, fundraising will be again be underway soon.

“People are going to see improvements, and they’ll be interested again,” she said.

In addition to the work being done to give the building’s appearance a makeover, the borough is developing a request for proposals for an architect to redesign renovations for the interior of the original building.

“The role of the Library has changed somewhat since the project was conceived so we want to take a fresh look at how to best utilize the space,” Kunze wrote in an email.

Sanner explained that in the ten years since the borough first looked at revamping the building, the library has come to focus more on technology and become far more involved in being a meeting place for community groups.

“That’s not a need that was clearly defined ten years ago,” she said.

The downstairs portion of the new wing, which now contains an adult services center, had been intended as a meeting place, with the adult collection to be housed in the renovated original building.

To accommodate the needs of community groups affiliated with the library, Sanner said, outside space has been sought to host events. She hopes that once the project renovating the older building is complete, the library will be able to use the downstairs for the purpose it intended more than a decade ago, becoming a central meeting place for the town.