Saturday, July 14, 2012

Walmart building is now library

Mosaic depicting sunflowers
McAllen Public Library: Photographic tour of new main library
While shelving at the Middletown library today, library director Gehlen Palmer showed me an amazing slide show produced by the McAllen Public Library in Texas. The slide show presents a photographic tour of its new main library.

The photos depict the incredible transformation of what Palmer said used to be a Walmart.

According to a year-in-review blog on the McAllen Public Library website, the opening of its new main library “was the event that effectively transformed MPL from a neighborhood library into something like a regional attraction. We continue to believe that New Main is the largest single floor public library in the nation – ample space for the 3000+ people who attended the grand opening [Dec. 10, 2011].”

With our new Middletown library under construction just across the street, I share in the excitement of a new and larger facility for the McAllen Public Library.

An information page about the new main library cites library dimensions at 123,000 square feet, containing 355,794 items. The page includes links to stories by area publication The Monitor that document the former Walmart’s transformation.

Texas yarnbombers, this is your opportunity: how would you commemorate a repurposing of this magnitude?

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