The Region of Waterloo approved a $970,000 expansion proposal for its library headquarters in Baden. The work expected to get underway in October will add 1,120 square feet to the office building, including an additional washroom. The building will undergo some renovations and maintenance, as well. The parking lot will be enlarged.
A growing staff contingent led to the decision to expand the space at the headquarters building, which was originally constructed in the 1990s.
“We’ve added to our staff compliment here at headquarters, so right now we’ve used up what was previously meeting place – we’ve put desks and offices in there,” said Kelly Bernstein, manager of library services for the Region of Waterloo Library.
“We have pretty cramped quarters in parts of the building and we have no meeting space, no collaboration space, no kind of shared work space. So the expansion will allow us to have all of those spaces back.”
Bernstein estimates the headquarters have added four new positions to the staff in the last year-and-a-half alone. Moreover, the way the office operates has changed as well, says Bernstein, with work being a lot more collaboratively organized – hence the need for more common workspaces. The building meanwhile has not seen any notable changes in the past 25 years.
“We have teams of staff who work on different projects together, like our programming team, for instance. They don’t have a space to store half the stuff that they have, and they don’t have any kind of dedicated space to do their collaborative work, and their work is very collaborative. So we’ve included in the new design a space for that,” said Bernstein.
In terms of benefits to the community, Bernstein says she expects the expansion will help library staff deliver more programming and manage new libraries, like those being considered for St. Clements and Breslau, currently deemed “unconsidered capital projects.”
Construction at the headquarters, being carried out by Century Group Inc., is expected to run from October until May of next year.
