WINTER PARK, Fla. – Winter Park opens a new literary era Saturday when the city cuts the ribbon on its library and events center.
The 36,000-square-foot facility replaces the current library on New England Avenue, and sits on the site of the old civics center on Morse Boulevard. The library space is expanded by 12,000 square feet, with more room for research and archives, study rooms, an arts and crafts room, meeting space, an entrepreneur center and a larger youth collection. A new automated materials handler and digital checkout system is meant to make returns and re-shelving faster. An auditorium can seat up to 120 people.
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The facility also has a new computer lab with double the number of computers, 3D printers and a studio for audio and video recording.
“The old space was great, but it was somewhat confined, and so with this the amount of usable space and the flexibility of the space (it) is great,” Winter Park City Manager Randy Knight said.
The events center side of the facility features a grand ballroom, an outdoor amphitheater, rooftop event space and covered outdoor spaces.
It took the city of Winter Park seven years and $42 million to get the facility built. Voters narrowly approved a $30 million bond issue in 2016. The rest of the money came from Orange County’s tourism development tax, along with fundraising and other grants.
Debate and lawsuits ensued about the location and the funding. In the end, the final design and price tag was approved by the city in 2020.
“In any great community, there’s going to be a lot of opposition, a lot of things people would like to see different,” Knight said. “Maybe it’s the location, maybe it’s the architectural style, but what I would say is this is about community now. This library is going to be spectacular, the events center is going to be spectacular.”
The library’s design is inspired by Winter Park’s local flora, according to the designer, Sir David Adjaye, a well-respected architect whose work includes the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.
“The library and event center’s forms really came from a very rigorous study of the climate, the culture, of the building in this part of the world,” said Adjaye in a video on the city’s website. “So it’s partly inspired by nature, partly inspired by shell structural forms, wanting to make an architecture that is environmentally doing a lot of work which will hopefully seem as if it’s always been there or be completely new.”
Adjaye is expected to speak at the ribbon cutting ceremony Saturday, which will also feature an open house with a full slate of events.
To see the schedule, head to the Winter Park Library website.
The library operates separately from the Orange County Public Library System. While the library is free for Winter Park residents, non-residents can purchase a library card for $10.