Project to open a library branch in downtown Anchorage moves forward

The municipality is advancing a long-awaited project to open a public library branch in downtown Anchorage.

Plans call for the branch to be located inside the historic City Hall building on Fourth Avenue, although there’s a chance the chosen location may not work out.

The Anchorage Assembly on Tuesday approved 12-year agreement with the Anchorage Library Foundation, a nonprofit supporting the public library, to largely fund the branch’s operations for that time. The city will also receive $2.38 million of state grant money via the foundation that will go toward renovating the building under another measure approved Tuesday.

The Assembly’s passage of the agreements allows money to start flowing so the project can begin to move forward, Assembly member Felix Rivera said.

The library foundation is the beneficiary of a growing endowment from longtime Anchorage resident Janet Goetz, who died in 2010 and bequeathed her estate to the nonprofit in order to open a new library branch downtown.

After construction is complete, the foundation will donate up to $450,000 annually for the branch’s operations, according to city documents.

Public Library Acting Director Elizabeth Nicolai said the project is now in its very beginning stages, so it’s not yet clear exactly when the branch will open.

Plans to use old City Hall were first announced by then-Mayor Dave Bronson last year.

Shortly afterward, the foundation’s executive director acknowledged concerns about the building’s viability, such as whether the 88-year-old building can withstand holding heavy book shelving.

“We have to do an engineering study of old City Hall to make sure that it’s something that can be built there safely,” Municipal Manager Becky Windt Pearson said.

The potential cost of any necessary renovations is another consideration, she said.

The city should have an answer about the building’s viability as a library branch “in the next few months,” Windt Pearson said.

Finalizing the grant agreement with the foundation unlocked the funding the city needs to take those steps, she said.

The Goetz trust requires the branch to be located in the original Anchorage townsite, which largely comprises downtown. If it turns out that the historic City Hall building is not a tenable location, the city will collaborate with the foundation to figure out another location, Windt Pearson said.

”But we’re really hopeful that we’ll be able to make it work in old City Hall,” she added.

The state grant agreement for construction requires the renovations to be completed by the end of 2026, Nicolai said. The grant is also predicated on the branch being located in the historic City Hall building.

While designs for the branch aren’t finalized yet, the public library hopes to create one that serves downtown residents and people who work in the area, Nicolai said.

“There would be a robust area for requesting and picking up holds, as well as a popular and new book collection,” she said.

With a tourism presence already in downtown, the library hopes to also host a local history or local interest section, Nicolai said.

“As a library and the city as a whole, we are excited about this,” she said.

While there have been some delays and questions over the project, “we continue to have great energy for it,” Nicolai said. “We are looking forward to serving residents of downtown. We want to do well by the Goetz family and the trust, and so we just want to make sure we’re doing our due diligence, but moving the project forward.”

It’s been decades since the downtown area had a library.

The city closed its former longtime Loussac Library location downtown in 1986 and moved the main branch to its current location in Midtown. A smaller branch downtown briefly continued to exist until 1988, when the city closed it along with three others during an economic recession.