Aurora’s Chambers Plaza Library reopened less than three years ago to great fanfare after a decade-plus closure. However now the modest department on the fringe of a strip mall on East Colfax Avenue will shut once more — this time for good.
It’s one in every of two branches set to go darkish within the metropolis on the finish of October because the Aurora Public Library shrinks its presence from seven to 5 branches in an effort to consolidate providers throughout the town of 400,000 to the areas the place they’re used most. The opposite one focused to shut is the Iliff Sq. Library at South Peoria Road and East Iliff Avenue.
Whereas the dual closures will coincide with an enlargement of the Martin Luther King Jr. department — a couple of miles down Colfax from the Chambers Plaza Library — it’s chilly consolation for many who stay in and round Aurora’s Altura neighborhood.
“I really like this library,” Debbie Cochran stated as she received able to enter the Chambers Plaza department on a current morning.
Cochran, 75, doesn’t personal a pc. She makes use of the library’s financial institution of desktop machines to learn and ship emails.
“I’ve entry to their computer systems,” she stated. “It’s very handy.”
Ginger White Brunetti, the director of the Aurora Library and Cultural Services Department, characterised the department closures scheduled for Oct. 24 as a “strategic enterprise determination.” Ending the leases on each the Chambers Plaza and Iliff Sq. buildings will save the town $120,000 a yr.
The enlargement of the MLK department, which is being funded by a $2.5 million federal grant, will double the scale of the library to 16,500 sq. ft by activating its second flooring, White Brunetti stated. Which means extra examine and assembly rooms, new expertise and “maker areas,” the place patrons can study new expertise, like utilizing a 3D printer or a stitching machine.
White Brunetti stated the 5 workers members at Chambers Plaza and Iliff Sq. will probably be transferred to MLK, which is scheduled to open in its new, upgraded configuration on Nov. 3.
“We thought it was higher to place our seasoned workers at MLK, which is increasing to optimize the assets we have now,” she stated. “And people (two) branches don’t have the identical variety of visits as our different branches.”
In accordance with 2024 library knowledge, Chambers Plaza noticed 32,098 visits and Iliff Sq. had 33,915 — the 2 least-patronized branches within the system. Hoffman Heights Library, simply southwest of the Anschutz Medical Campus, was third from the underside, with almost 50,000 visits final yr.
Aurora Public Library’s two hottest areas have been Tallyn’s Attain Library, in southeast Aurora, with 182,378 visits, and the Central Library, close to the town’s municipal headquarters on East Alameda Avenue, with 116,805 visits.
Checkouts of bodily supplies throughout the system have declined during the last three years — from 406,886 in 2022 to 389,218 in 2023 to 304,263 final yr. General checkout quantity stays properly beneath its pre-pandemic stage of 613,000 objects in 2019. On the digital aspect, e-checkouts have fluctuated within the final six years however have typically gone up from 230,000 in 2019, peaking in 2023 at 380,000.
Aurora Metropolis Councilman Curtis Gardner expressed disappointment on the information, which the city announced earlier this month.
“I feel libraries are a core service of metropolis authorities, and they’re simply as related at this time as they have been 50 years in the past,” he stated. “Whereas this determination is smart from a customer standpoint, it’s nonetheless disappointing. I hope my colleagues will prioritize funding for our libraries sooner or later to make sure we have now a library system on par with a metropolis of our dimension.”
Neighboring Denver, with barely lower than twice the inhabitants of Aurora, has 27 library branches.
The Aurora Public Library will try to serve the neighborhoods it’s leaving with extra visits from the Bookmobile to parks and recreation facilities the place patrons can try and return objects. The library system may also provide on-line assets and transit choices to full-service libraries within the space.
“That’s not the identical as having a brick-and-mortar library,” White Brunetti conceded. “Closing two branches just isn’t the route we wished to go in.”
This autumn’s consolidation isn’t the primary time Aurora has needed to shutter branches. In 2009, the system closed 4 of its seven branches in the course of the Nice Recession — victims of the slumping financial system and a failed property-tax hike that will have saved them open.
Over the following decade and a half, they have been all resuscitated — most not too long ago with the grand reopening of Chambers Plaza Library in 2023.
Asantai Thornton, 23, stated she will probably be unhappy to see the Chambers Plaza department shut in two months. She lives only a couple blocks away from the library and visits it a number of occasions a month.
“It’s not like there are a number of locations the place folks can collect,” Thornton stated, as she eyed “Directions for Dancing” by Nicola Yoon and “Love Any individual” by Rachel Roasek as potential late summer time reads. “It’s a manner the place I can escape. It’s at all times so chill, it’s quiet.”
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