Strategies by GTA public libraries to re-invent their branches as welcoming and dynamic community places are changing public perceptions of libraries. This change was recently summed up in a column by John Bentley Mays in the Globe and Mail Real Estate section, in which he profiled the Library District Condominium development in the Fort York area. In describing how the formerly desolate Fort York area is evolving, he captures the key elements of successful urban neighbourhoods:
….along with the towers, the signs of metropolitan civilization are appearing. There is now a big grocery store at the corner of Fort York Boulevard and Spadina Avenue, within easy walking distance of thousands of homes. Close to the store, a new school and park will soon be completed. And a couple of long blocks west along the uncompleted boulevard (where it joins Bathurst Street), one of the surest indicators of full-service urban culture will emerge: a spanking new 17,000-square-foot public library to be designed by Shirley Blumberg, partner in the Toronto firm of Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects.
He also notes the use of literary themes in the condo marketing – with suite layouts “named after honoured authors, including Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo and Agatha Christie” – which he views as “an interestingly antiquarian gesture – especially in view of the fact that the branch library will almost certainly be a mediatheque, with many CDs, DVDs, computer terminals and such, instead of a conventional book morgue.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/once-lonely-fort-york-area-starts-to-buzz/article1607745/
….along with the towers, the signs of metropolitan civilization are appearing. There is now a big grocery store at the corner of Fort York Boulevard and Spadina Avenue, within easy walking distance of thousands of homes. Close to the store, a new school and park will soon be completed. And a couple of long blocks west along the uncompleted boulevard (where it joins Bathurst Street), one of the surest indicators of full-service urban culture will emerge: a spanking new 17,000-square-foot public library to be designed by Shirley Blumberg, partner in the Toronto firm of Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects.
He also notes the use of literary themes in the condo marketing – with suite layouts “named after honoured authors, including Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo and Agatha Christie” – which he views as “an interestingly antiquarian gesture – especially in view of the fact that the branch library will almost certainly be a mediatheque, with many CDs, DVDs, computer terminals and such, instead of a conventional book morgue.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/once-lonely-fort-york-area-starts-to-buzz/article1607745/
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