Library renovation finishing this month, officials say

DOWNEY — After a two month delay due to COVID-19, construction on the city library is due for completion this month.

In March of last year, Downey’s library temporarily closed its doors for what was initially anticipated to be a 15-month period to undergo extensive renovation thanks to Measure S.

However, the onset of the coronavirus pandemic delayed plans for a few months.

Assistant City Manager John Oskoui – answering an email inquiring about the library’s progress – said that the City has been providing updates regularly, citing the city’s Measure S website.

“We began construction in July of 2019. Our original completion date was end of June 2020,” wrote Oskoui. “Due to COVID-19’s impact on delivery and availability of construction material and services, the completion date has been pushed back by two months.”

According to the website, completion of construction is penned for this month, with move in and set up following in October.

Oskoui added that he had “no doubt that the finished product is going to be very impressive.”

Before it’s closure, the library had not seen any renovations or updates since 1979-80.

However, the city would likely still not open the library at this time even if the remodel had been completed on schedule, due to county restrictions during the current crisis.

“Let’s keep in mind that even if the Downey Library was not closed as a result of construction, it would have remained closed because of County Health guidelines,” wrote Oskoui. “We will open the Downey Library once the County allows re-opening of public spaces such as libraries.”

In the meantime, the library continues to be operational in a virtual capacity.

According to Ben Dickow – who took over daily management of the library in 2017 – the library has not only continued to provide virtual programming and materials throughout both construction and COVID-19, it has – in fact - expanded.

“When the library went under construction, we made a very concerted, intentional effort to keep library operations open, but obviously without a headquarters,” said Dickow. “We’ve been running programs like story time, bilingual story time, things like that…. We’ve been absolutely running programming services during closure.”

“We’ve also increased by tens of thousands the amount of online materials that are available for free to people. I think our E-book library is over 160,000 titles now, [and] over 30,000 movies you can rent through the library; a ton of online resources that people can still take advantage of.”