0 Vancouver Public Library’s central branch will debut a new rooftop garden on Saturday (September 29), and construction workers are putting in final touches before the public reveal. When Vancouver Public Library (VPL)’s central branch opened in 1995, its top two floors were leased to the provincial government on a 20-year tenancy as part of a financing project. When the long-term lease ended in 2015, planning and construction for the central library’s eighth and ninth levels proceeded immediately. On Saturday (September 29), those top two floors will be open to the public for the first time. The highly anticipated project adds 42,000-square-feet of new indoor space to the VPL’s central branch, which includes various amenities such as a glass-enclosed reading room, bookable meeting rooms, exhibit and gallery space, an 80-seat theatre, outdoor terraces, and a rooftop garden. “In a 2017 study, it found that people feel an increasing sense of social isolation and they’re really looking for public spaces to connect in person,” Christina de Castell, VPL’s chief librarian, told the press at the central library. “This is something that the public library offers to people every day. This is the reason we thought that opening up these new […]
Photos: Vancouver Public Library to debut massive new rooftop garden this week

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