OROVILLE – The Oroville Public Library invites the community to hear about upcoming improvements to the library space and share feedback and ideas about potential changes.
NCW Libraries will host a town hall on Wednesday, Oct. 23 from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the Oroville library. The event is free and open to all community members of any age. Library Forward, a nationally recognized design firm specializing in libraries, will share a short presentation about the potential for the Oroville Library to spark ideas. Participants will have an opportunity to explore design concepts and vote on the design elements they’d like to see at the Oroville Library.
Representatives from the library and the design team will also be soliciting input and answering questions later in the day from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. at a pop-up kiosk outside of Frontier Foods.
For those unable to attend the town hall or events, feedback can be provided via an online survey at www.ncwlibraries.org/oroville/. Paper copies of the survey are available at the library in English and Spanish.
“Our goal is to reach as many members of the community as possible, both current library users and non-users,” said Heather Burnell, Oroville Librarian. “Please come share your ideas for how the library can better serve your needs.”
The community engagement events are part of NCW Libraries Reimagining Spaces project, a multi-year interior redesign effort at all NCW Libraries branches throughout the five-county system. Library Forward and Forte Architects of Wenatchee have been hired by NCW Libraries to lead community engagement efforts and develop interior design plans. Oroville will be the ninth library branch to begin its redesign.
Design plans for the new interior spaces will begin in early 2025. The goal is to complete the addition and space redesign in early 2026.
At the Aug. 20 Oroville City Council meeting, Tim Dillman with NCWL spoke at length about its plans to refresh Oroville’s public library, which is part of NCWL’s many regional libraries.
Dillman, who is NCWL’s Executive Assistant for Special Projects, said he will be assisting librarian Burnell in planning and facilitating community outreach events in the coming months to “generate excitement for the project” and gather input from residents about what they would like to see in their new library space.
“One of the special projects I have been assigned is the ‘Reimagining Spaces’ Project, which is a district-wide project to remodel all our interior spaces of the libraries we operate,” said Dillman at the council meeting.
“Oroville is one of the next libraries up, we have already started the process and we have completed about seven libraries. We are getting ready to kick things off with Oroville and we find the best way to sort of kick it off is to talk with the leaders of the community and make sure you are aware of what we’re planning on doing and why we’re doing it,” he said.
Dillman explained that NCWL hired a third-party firm in 2020 to perform a comprehensive facilities condition assessment for all their branch libraries to understand, prioritize and budget for maintenance in both the short and long term.
The assessment showed both interior and exterior needs, as well as a need for electrical, HVAC and safety improvements, including a low-voltage fire alarm. The observed deficiency (OD) cost to make all the upgrades to the 1915-era building, which belongs to the City of Oroville, was estimated at $121,000.
For more information about community engagement for the Oroville Library and the Reimagining Spaces Project, visit ncwlibraries.org/reimagining-spaces
