The upstairs seating area in the new main library branch in downtown Wilmington. (Port City Daily/Brenna Flanagan)

NEW HANOVER COUNTY — The rehabilitated downtown library branch will open again for public use after a year-and-a-half of construction. Port City Daily got a tour of the new facility ahead of its ribbon-cutting and public reception, to be held Monday, Oct. 6.

READ MORE: Northchase public library construction contract awarded for $9.3M

Leading the tour was New Hanover County Library Director Dana Conners, who showed media the library’s new digs, featuring two floors of collections and meeting spaces encapsulated by the building’s walls of glass. 

For more than a decade, the county has been discussing building a new downtown branch and in 2023 signed a contract to do so with Cape Fear Development as part of Project Grace. The project will redevelop the block cornered by Grace, Chestnut, North Second, and North Third streets with the new library and the Cape Fear Museum, inclusive of a planetarium, slated to open in the same building next summer. The county has put $77 million into the venture. 

The public will be allowed in at 2 p.m. Monday.

“We have purposefully, and I’ll fall on this sword, invited the entire community to join us for this ceremony,” NHC Chief Communications Officer Josh Smith said at Thursday’s commissioner meeting. “So it very well may flow out into the streets, it’s possible, we hope that’s the case, I know a lot of folks are excited about it.”

Seating area in the upstairs part of the new downtown library (Port City Daily/Brenna Flanagan)

Conners’ vision for the Main Library is akin to what’s called a “third place,” a term coined in the 1980s for informal public spaces separate from a person’s home or workplace; some definitions go further in describing places that don’t require a purchase of any kind. Third places have been in decline, taking a big hit during the Covid-19 pandemic but also fanning out as younger people favor virtual spaces. 

The downtown library — considered the main branch — opened in 1981 in its original location on Chestnut Street. Conners hopes, in its latest iteration, it will serve the practical and social needs of a modern citizenry as well. 

“I think a lot of people have preconceived notions about what a library is, it’s either a place they enjoyed as a child or a place they can bring their children or they think it’s that shush-y quiet place for old ladies to check out books but we have stuff here for everyone,” Conners said, noting offerings include computer access, research databases, newspapers and magazines, and programming spanning all age groups. 

The new adult books section at the front entrance of the new main library branch. (Port City Daily/Brenna Flanagan)

Though most important, Conners said, the library serves as a place of communion. 

“I know in today’s society it can be very difficult and loneliness is a big thing; here you can come and can meet other people without any expectation of having to buy anything or be a part of something else,” Conners said. “You can come in here and just meet like-minded people — or not like-minded people.” 

In its agreement with the county, Cape Fear Development also is purchasing from the county the acreage where the library formerly was located at a minimum of $3.5 million; the property transfer is set to occur in November. The development team has not yet announced explicit plans for the parcel, though it’s anticipated to be mixed-use projects, inclusive of housing and commercial. 

The circulation desk at the New Hanover County’s new main library branch. (Port City Daily/Brenna Flanagan)

Project Grace’s cost to the county — originally $60.5 million but extended due to inflation — was initially opposed by the Local Government Commission and the former state treasurer, Dale Folwell. 

“There have been any number of difficulties and travails that we had to work through and here we are about to open one half of this very wonderful, purpose-built facility,” Commissioner Dane Scalise, who came onto the commission in April 2023, said at Thursday’s commissioner meeting.

Chair Bill Rivenbark replied with a chuckle “you just don’t know what we went through.” 

County manager told commissioners, despite the nine commissioners that have spanned the Project Grace timeline, all votes on it have been unanimous.

After entering through the Grace Street doors, visitors will pass the circulation desk and either head to the first floor’s children collection or upstairs to the adult and teen shelves. 

The magazine and newspaper area upstairs in the new main library branch. (Port City Daily/Brenna Flanagan)

The first floor contains book holds and large print selections, along with the entire children’s collection fit with its own seating areas and a programming room. Aside from the collection, the ground floor has a multipurpose room for county and library events — one coming up is the November Cape Fear Book Festival, to be held Nov. 15 and Nov. 16. 

Upstairs is the adult and teen collections, inclusive of a teens-only room with lounge seating and gaming consoles, along with another circulation desk, and more seating areas. The library has a dedicated room for local history and archives for public access with staff assistance, as well as study areas. There are four small rooms dedicated to the public on a first-come-first-served basis for two-hour allotments of time. A small and large conference room can be reserved by nonprofits for $5 a session or used by the library and county. 

Conners shared the collections are more streamlined than what was in the previous building. The former location closed on Aug. 4 to prepare for the move; Conners said staff used this time to weed out material, particularly outdated nonfiction titles. 

The library has the second-largest elevator on the East Coast, according to Library Director Dana Conners. (Port City Daily/Brenna Flanagan)

Much of the seating area is situated near the building’s massive windows, which have been designed with glass printed with ink, which contains ultra-small ground glass particles, also known as “frit.” The design’s purpose is three-fold — to reduce bird collisions with the windows, to help cool the building and ease the burden on its solar panels, and because it looks like the pages of a book.

Conners said the library has room to evolve, with flexibility top-of-mind. For example, the shelving for the children’s books are all on wheels to allow for quick relocation, though she said the adult shelves could also be repositioned if ever needed.

“Library services do change a lot,” Conners said. “In the time we were in the old building, from 1981 until we left this year, think about all the changes that have happened in the world — the internet was not a thing when we moved in to that building, people didn’t need electricity to charge their phones, publishing was a very different field back then.” 

The local history room, housing the library’s archives, at the new main library branch. (Port City Daily/Brenna Flanagan)

Staff are now tasked with a lot more than checking out books. Conners, an e-reader herself, said the library can help visitors download free ebooks they can get through the library. She also said her staff is exploring how artificial intelligence can help their operations; she said they can  help connect students and researchers with reputable databases rather than depend on AI bot ChatGPT.

Additionally, the library will continue to have a social worker on staff; anyone in need of services outside library staff’s purview can be connected with her. It’s a service unique to downtown’s main library branch, implemented around the time the county commissioners passed an ordinance banning camping and loitering on county property. The former library has been a popular congregation site for people experiencing homelessness. 

Conners noted the library can also help those seeking a job with applications. It still has several open desktop computers, but has added six laptops to be used anywhere on the library’s campus. 

“The library’s a great place to come and be and work and see other people … go to classes, use resources that I otherwise might not have access to,” Conners said. 

Below are additional photos from the library tour.

The children’s collection, as viewed from the library stairs. (Port City Daily/Brenna Flanagan)

The large print collection. (Port City Daily/Brenna Flanagan)

The children’s collection. (Port City Daily/Brenna Flanagan)

Seating in the children’s collection. (Port City Daily/Brenna Flanagan)

The children’s collection. (Port City Daily/Brenna Flanagan)

The children’s programming room. (Port City Daily/Brenna Flanagan)

A portion of the adult collection. (Port City Daily/Brenna Flanagan)

The circulation desk upstairs in the new Main Library. (Port City Daily/Brenna Flanagan)

Desktop computers and more seating upstairs in the library. (Port City Daily/Brenna Flanagan)

Library Director Dana Conners demonstrates the compact shelving used in the library’s local history room. (Port City Daily/Brenna Flanagan)

The teens-only room in the new Main Library. (Port City Daily/Brenna Flanagan)

One of the four meeting rooms upstairs in the new library. (Port City Daily/Brenna Flanagan)

The building’s windows are designed with fritting to deter birds and heat; Conners also said they were designed to look like book pages. (Port City Daily/Brenna Flanagan)

The multi-purpose room for county and library events, downstairs in the Main Library. (Port City Daily/Brenna Flanagan)

The adult collection in the new Main Library. (Port City Daily/Brenna Flanagan)

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