Burton Barr Central Library in Phoenix reopens after year-long closure
Jun 16, 2018, 9:25 AM | Updated: Jun 21, 2018, 2:02 pm
(Facebook/Councilwoman Debra Stark)
PHOENIX — The main public library in Phoenix reopened Saturday after being closed for nearly a year due to damage caused by a pipe that broke during a monsoon storm.
The Burton Barr Central Library reopened to the public at 9 a.m. on Saturday morning.
The reopening of the library will come with a day’s worth of events, from a magician for the children to crafts for the adults. It will also focus on services, programs and resources that will be offered to the community.
The Park Central satellite location for the library closed on June 8, but a book drop will be available at the location through Sunday.
The reopening comes nearly a year after a sprinkler pipe that broke during a monsoon storm pumped between 50 and 60 gallons of water per minute into the building, causing damage to about half of the building and ruining ceilings, floors, shelving and about 6,000 books.
Lee Franklin, the community relations manager for the Phoenix Public Library, told KTAR News 92.3 FM in May that library officials took advantage of the long closure to not only make those repairs, but to also make upgrades and enhancements to the building.
“We’re excited — we’re going to have a significant increase and impact in what we’re going to offer the public,” she said.
Some of those improvements included nearly tripling a children’s area, building two computer labs and a designated room for 3-D printing programs and doubling the size of the College Depot space, which will allow the library to host GED certification programs on site.
“Since we had to take [the library] offline to make the necessary repairs to maintain the standard of the building, we wanted to make sure we took advantage of that time to make program enhancements that we wanted to do for some time so we weren’t lingering and making [the closure] longer than it needed to be,” Franklin said.
An investigation found that several library employees “knew or had a reason to know that the sprinkler system was corroded and therefore compromised” before the July 2017 storm flooded the building.
Three library employees were terminated, two were demoted and one was given a 40-hour suspension in response to the investigation.
Five fire department employees were also fired, demoted or reprimanded for inaction that led to the wreckage.
KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Martha Maurer contributed to this report.