The Central branch of the Regina Public Library in downtown is scheduled to be replaced.

In the meantime, a decision has been made to move to a temporary building, sooner rather than later.

“It will re-locate because of the condition of the building, and we don’t want to invest more money into that building” according to the Chair of the Regina Public Library Marj Gavigan. “We have to move anyway to demolish the old building, and build the new library on the same site”.

There are some concerns about the protection of the volumes of books and other material the central branch library has on offer.

“So we are moving a little ahead of schedule, and its going to take a little bit of time to go through the process of designing and building that new building anyway” Gavigan went on to say.

Regina City Council included a new central branch library in its recent “catalyst committee”, which identified priorities for building new large scale public buildings.  A replacement for the Lawson Aquatics Centre, and a replacement for Brandt Centre made the list, as did the new downtown library,  Ideally the new building will be on the site of the old one.

Regina Public Library is starting the process of looking for a temporary home, while the new one is funded, designed and built.