APPLETON, Wis. — Appleton officials unveil the latest design for the remodeling of the public library.
The city went back to the drawing board after initial bids for the library project came in $14 million more than the initial budget amount.
Facilities director Dean Gazza thinks they’ll get more bids and lower bids this time around.
“Went back to really being too busy and just too much work in the market and not enough labor,” Gazza said. “And so, as we see projects easing, and as we make our way ’23 into ’24. So we’re hopeful that things will definitely improve.”
The new library design features about 15,000-square-feet less space, with more rooms serving multiple purposes. Library director Colleen Rortvedt says that will result in a reduction in the services they’d hoped to provide.
“Fewer programs. We have a history of a high volume of program and event use in the library,” Rortvedt said. “We topped out at almost 5,000 in the years before the pandemic. So that is going to impact usage numbers. It’s going to impact the number of spaces that the community can book because so much of that use isn’t the library controlling that. We just facilitate the community’s use.”
Also gone is a planned children’s garden.
The city will go out for bids on the new design later this year.
