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2001 – 27 January 2007
The vote: In 2001 Allen County taxpayers approved a bond of 84,000,000 dollars to expand and completely renovate the Main Library and to renovate or build eleven branches. The branch work ran from 2002; the Main project itself ran from May 2004 to December 2006, across the building's full downtown block at what is now 900 Library Plaza. The Allen County Genealogical Society's places guide and the Celsus library-architecture wiki name Gwathmey Siegel and Associates Architects of New York as the remodel's designers.
Opening day: The grand opening on 27 January 2007 drew more than 10,000 visitors; Randall T. Shepard, Chief Justice of the Indiana Supreme Court, was among the speakers. The building totals 367,000 square feet around a block-long Great Hall, with a café and food court, an art gallery (now the Jeffrey R. Krull Gallery), retail space, a media wall, five public meeting rooms for groups of six to 500, six study rooms, a computer training room, a silent reading room, 238 public-access computers and an underground garage for 130 cars. A 230-seat theater in the complex opened on 1 April 2007. The Genealogy Center took the second floor.
Sources:
- Library Journal, "Expanded New Main Opens in Fort Wayne," 2007 — the opening day, the bond and the building's contents.
- Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana, named-places page — the branch remodeling from 2002, the Main construction dates and the Gwathmey Siegel attribution.
- ACPL Facilities Master Plan, 2022 — the 367,000 square feet and the 1968/1979/2007 build layers.