By Eileen Buckley
Buffalo, NY – Despite massive spending cuts to the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library system, renovation work will continue at the Central Branch.
Even though the system lost $4.2 million in Erie County funding this year, library leaders say they won't halt planned renovation work at the downtown branch. Monday, a ribbon cutting ceremony was held to show off the newly remodeled entrance off Washington Street. It cost $3 million to redesign the borrowing area, add a new gift shop and a full-service cafe called "Fables."
Rebecca Pordum, chair of the board of trustees, says it is part of phase one of renovation work that had been planned well before the county's fiscal crisis.
Kenneth Stone, deputy director and chief financial officer of the library system, says the remodeling will actually generate some new revenues for the library system. Stone says the new Fables cafe is being operated by an outside vendor that will pay rent and share profits with the system.
More than $1 million for the phase one work came from a bequest from the estates of lifelong western New York residents -- Richard Krieger and Robert Kreiger. The total renovation project will cost $15-million.
There has been some criticism over the library board's potential plans to close some of its 52 branches in the future. A leader of the "Save the Library" coalition, ElizaBeth Berry, recently called the central library "a white elephant." She says the downtown headquarters is too costly. However, Stone says every library system needs one central location to conduct processing for the other branches.
Stone says the Central Library also houses a majority of the system's collection because many of the other branches are very small.
Phase two of construction is already underway, focusing on the popular materials area.
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