Maple Grove Library set to open on town green

A big new Maple Grove Library, three times larger than the one it replaces, will open Saturday on the Maple Grove town green.

Abounding with glass and, like the Twins' new ballpark, detailed with Minnesota limestone, the new one-story, contemporary-style building has standout features that include artful lighting, a broad vaulted ceiling and an outdoor reading porch.

As people see its beauty and openness, senior librarian Kathryn Zimmerman expects the library to become a community gathering spot.

"It has an outdoor feel even though it's inside," she said.

And it actually will allow visitors to venture outdoors with their reading materials.

The unusual reading porch will be furnished with Adirondack chairs, Zimmerman said. "People can sit out there and read and look at the pond."

Hennepin County spent about $29 million to build the spacious library for the growing city. The 40,000-square-foot building also has a 350-space parking ramp.

The building faces Main Street, anchoring one end of the village green across a park from the Maple Grove Government Center. Nearby is Life Time Fitness, the city's community center and the new city bandshell set to open this summer on the pond next to the library. The library parking ramp will be open for all activities, 24 hours a day.

Designed as a "green" building, it has many walls that are floor-to-ceiling glass to bring in natural light and reduce energy use, said John Wicks, project manager for the county. Light fixtures are long, thin shafts, 5 inches wide at most, that look as if they have tumbled playfully -- like pick-up sticks -- into the air space beneath the vaulted ceiling.

While they appear to be randomly placed, "it's all highly engineered" to provide the right amount of light above the book shelves, tables and computers, Wicks said. The fixtures dim or brighten as natural light builds and wanes.

Another green feature is a heat exchanger that uses coils sunk into the adjacent pond to heat and cool library air. And there are plants growing on the rooftop to help keep the building cool and control rain runoff.

As one of the fastest-growing cities in Hennepin County, Maple Grove rated a library the size of Eden Prairie's -- larger than the system's community libraries but not as big as the 60,000-square-foot regional libraries at Southdale, Ridgedale and Brookdale, Wicks said. To keep up with the expected demand for materials, "everything in here now is self-checkout."

The book return is mechanized as well.

In a futuristic departure from the traditional labor-intensive handling of returned materials, books returned at two exterior drop points are brought via conveyor belts to a mechanized sorter in the library's back room. After reading the bar code on each item, the sorter sends the materials down another conveyor belt to one of several chutes where a mechanical arm pushes them onto a library cart to be taken out to the library floor for re-shelving by library workers.

The 4.75-acre site donated by the city of Maple Grove to Hennepin County for the library affords pretty vistas of ponds on two sides and Main Street out the front window.

Two less appealing views include the public restrooms and a large electrical transformer the city built for its nearby bandshell.

The transformer and toilets were put in after the library design was approved and came as a surprise to the county, Wicks said.

Maple Grove Planning Director Dick Edwards conceded that "transformers do tend to pop up where you don't want them to be."

The library view of the three pavilions that house restrooms and concessions for the band shell will be softened as newly planted landscaping grows larger, he said.

"In the end, it will all blend in with everything else," Edwards said.

Laurie Blake • 612-673-1711