After 16 months of renovations, the Red Bank Public Library staff is taking the revamped facility on a “shakedown cruise,” according to library director Deborah Griffin-Sadel.
CHRIS KELLY staff The Children’s Reading Room is among the areas refurbished during renovations to the Red Bank Public Library, which is open on a limited schedule while work continues. The 84 West Front St. building reopened to the public Jan. 22 with temporary hours and work still being done on the second-floor Eisner Memorial Library.
“One of the reasons that we’re open with reduced hours is because we basically moved from our temporary quarters with just a couple of days to get in,” said Griffin- Sadel. “We do need time to get all offices set up, procedures in place, stuff like that. We’re finding out where there are bugs and we’re working on fixing them.”
The library is currently operating with reduced hours, which are 1 to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday.
Griffin-Sadel also said the library is hiring and training additional staff because of the larger facility.
According to Griffin-Sadel, her choice would have been to close the library to the public completely for a week or so to allow for time to set up internal operations.
She said because of the lengthy time that the library had already been closed to the public, it was opened with temporary hours, which allowed the library staff morning hours to work on the internal operations.
“There’s still a few odds and ends to be fixed. When we do the grand opening, we want to make sure we got it all complete,” said Griffin-Sadel, adding, “Right now we’re providing rather minimal services. Our computers, of course, are up and running, but we’re concentrating on getting our staff settled in, and once we’re settled in, we can concentrate on implementing the planned programming.”
The Red Bank Public Library, which had been closed since October 2006, was operating out of a storefront at 102 West Front St. to provide an office space to library staff and limited access for library patrons.
The renovations to the library building included a new heating and air conditioning system, carpeting, shelving and furniture, according to Griffin-Sadel.
She also said the inside of the building was repainted, some of the walls were taken down, an elevator was added, and a new restroom accessible to the handicapped was installed on the main floor.
The additions of the accessible restroom and the elevator were the result of a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice following a complaint filed against the borough citing lack of access to certain borough facilities by people with disabilities, including the library.
According to Griffin-Sadel, the accessibility for the handicapped has changed the lives of some patrons.
“The public who have been using the elevator are parents with strollers and small children,” said Griffin-Sadel.
She said the elevator will now allow grandparents using a walker or those who can’t walk as far, as well as handicapped parents, to use the elevator to take their children downstairs to the children’s reading room.
The adult and children’s reading rooms have been refurnished and rearranged, new computers with flat-screen monitors have been put in, and patrons now have the ability to go online and access the archives of the Red Bank Register, according to the library director.
“One of the things the renovation did was give us more shelf space, so we can budget … new materials,” she said.
The part of the library that is not open to the public yet is the second floor, and it will house the adult literature, art collections, and arts and entertainment sections. There is still work being done on the shelving and lighting in that portion of the building.
She also said library staff is working on putting together a collection of books on New Jersey history, which would include some specialized books with local maps of the area.
“We do have space for more books and other materials, which is great. We’ll be doing some more easily accessible collections of our nonfiction books,” said Griffin- Sadel.
Even with the reduced hours, the library has been averaging 50 to 100 visitors daily to view the approximately 45,000 books in the library collection, but that is not all they have been admiring, according to Griffin-Sadel.
“People who have been coming to this library for years have been saying ‘Oh, I never realized the view was so beautiful.’ At one time there were shelves in the way,” Griffin-Sadel said of the new floor plan, which opened up the room so the view of the Navesink River can be seen.
She added, “It really draws people to the back of the building, and we will be doing some special collections back there.”
Griffin-Sadel said once the library is fully open, the staff would like to get back to its programming schedule, with perhaps a few changes.
“We want to do more children’s programming. There are age groups that we haven’t done a lot for that we want to start working on,” said Griffin-Sadel.
Those include parents with toddlers as well as school-age children.
“I’d like to get more into doing reading groups, also.We have a wonderful working relationship with the Writers Ink poetry group, so we are hoping to do [poetry] readings,” said Griffin-Sadel.
She said more book discussion groups may be added, and informational programs on finance and health for adults as well as ESL (English as a second language) programs that serve the Spanish-speaking community.
“Our goal is to really try to make the library serve the people of Red Bank as they are,” said Griffin-Sadel.
Griffin-Sadel said there would be an official grand opening when the entire library is opened to the public.
The library renovation project has had its rough spots, including a lawsuit filed by the losing bidder, which was rejected by the courts.
The Borough Council awarded a $1.2 million contract for the extensive library renovations to Santorini Construction on May 2, 2006.
Last October, numerous change orders threatened to slow down the library renovation project in its final stages when the Borough Council voted at the Sept. 24 meeting to table a resolution authorizing a change order for the library renovation.
This change order was not the first that had come across the desks of Borough Council members, and the numerous change orders ended up costing the borough more than $100,000, according to project architect Ned Gaunt of Kaplan Gaunt DeSantis in Red Bank.
According to CFO Frank Mason, the project is still within budget, and the original bond ordinance approved by the borough was for $1.775 million.
Mason saidMonday the total expended to date is $1,502,819.56 and when $166,100.42, the amount still to be paid in engineering or other costs associated with the project, is added, he estimates the project will end up totaling $1.668 million.
The building was donated to the borough for use as a library by the Eisner family in 1937, and the borough constructed an addition in the 1960s.
Although uncertain of the full-time library hours, Griffin-Sadel is certain about one aspect of the return to the original library location. “It’s great to be back in the library busi- ness,” she said.