The Main Library block rebuilt

2019–2022

The project: The Main Library's most recent rebuilding began as a renovation and became a campus. Planning ran from 2016, and the library hired the planning consultants Kimberly Bolan and Associates in 2017; the consultants' own account of the work traces how a plan to renovate the Main Library for $8 million grew into a $38 million project — Building Design + Construction put the figure at $40 million — that renovated the upper three floors of the Main Library, some 85,000 square feet of its roughly 116,500, and added a new three-story Community Learning Center, some 38,000 square feet (the trade press rounds it to 40,000), on a vacant lot at the corner of South Michigan and West Wayne. Robert A.M. Stern Architects designed the work, with Stern and Melissa DelVecchio as lead designers; Bulley & Andrews managed construction. The funding came from three sources together: the library, the Community Foundation of St. Joseph County, and the City of South Bend. The Learning Center holds a 250-seat auditorium — the Leighton Auditorium, named in Bulley & Andrews's account at 252 seats — along with Beutter Kernan Hall, a café, a ballroom, and classrooms; the Richard Pfeil Family Courtyard joins the two buildings, and terra-cotta panels salvaged from the Avon Theater, razed in 2012, were worked into the new building's face. Before the work, the Main Library drew more than 1,000 visitors a day. The Main Library closed on 1 November 2019; it reopened, grandly, on 14 November 2021, under a new logo and website launched the month before; the Community Learning Center opened on 10 January 2022.

Sources:

1. St. Joseph County Public Library, "Main Library Renovations" (sjcpl.org/renovations) — the scope, the designers Stern and DelVecchio, the three funders, the 85,000 and 38,000 square feet, the Leighton Auditorium, Beutter Kernan Hall, the café, ballroom and courtyard, and the Avon Theater terra-cotta.
2. Kimberly Bolan and Associates, "South Bend Main Library + Community Learning Center" — the 2016–2021 course and the $8 million idea grown to $38 million.
3. Building Design + Construction (February 2022) — the $40 million figure, the 116,500-square-foot Main, the 40,000-square-foot Learning Center, and the 1,000 daily visitors.
4. Bulley & Andrews, project page — construction manager; the auditorium at 252 seats; the courtyard.
5. Wikipedia, "St. Joseph County, Indiana," Public Libraries section — the 2016 planning start; the 1 November 2019 closing. St. Joseph County Public Library news releases — the 14 November 2021 grand reopening, the October 2021 brand and website launch, and the 10 January 2022 Community Learning Center opening.