New Centretown library needed if main branch leaves, advocates say

A downtown Ottawa community association says the city will need to open a new library in the core if the central branch is eventually moved outside of Centretown.

Members of the Centretown Citizens Community Association (CCCA) met Saturday morning outside the Ottawa Public Library to hand out information pamphlets and explain to passers-by why both residents and visitors need easy access to library services.

"[Centretown] is a transit hub. It's a population hub. It's really the heart of the city," CCCA vice-president Tom Whillans told CBC News after the meeting.

"So for us to not have a library — whether it's for civil servants who work downtown to access, or whether it's for marginalized members of our community — to not have something in the urban core of the city, it seems completely unreasonable, to some extent." 

Winnowed down from 12 sites

In April, the city's library board voted to launch the process to find a new site for the central branch, which has occupied the same space at the corner of Metcalfe Street and Laurier Avenue West — albeit in different buildings — since 1906.

Three months later, the board revealed a longlist of 12 potential sites for the future flagship branch. All the sites were located between King Edward Avenue and Bayview Road, all within a few blocks of Queen Street.

However, as the CCCA notes, five of those locations are west of Bronson — which represents the western border of Centretown — while two more are on the other side of the Rideau Canal.

The library board has since winnowed down that list, although no one has been willing to confirm which of the original 12 locations made the cut and which have been shelved.

• Short list of potential sites for Ottawa's central library to be kept secret
• ANALYSIS | Secrecy shrouding library board's short list unnecessary

Whillans, who was not at Saturday's meeting, said it's a problem that no one really knows whether his neighbourhood will still have a library branch after everything's said and done.

"It's paramount that we have a local branch," Whillans said.

"If it's decided for the right rationale [to move the main branch out of Centretown], that's something that I think almost anyone could unilaterally support — if we maintain the services and the availability of a library in our community."

Whillans also said that Somerset Coun. Catherine McKenney, who represents the neighbourhood, would be calling for the library board to make the shortlist public at their Oct. 11 meeting.

Library CEO Danielle McDonald has said that the recommended site — which could also potentially combine a city library with the federally-run Library and Archives Canada — will be revealed in a major report due in December.