A milestone in the general renovation of the central library has been reached: Since Monday, September 2, 2024, the construction site area for the planned general renovation of the central library at Josef-Haubrich-Hof has been set up. The construction fence is being put up, the building facade is being scaffolded and – with the help of a large mobile crane – a two-story office container facility made up of a total of 35 containers is being erected. For the crane to work, Leonhard-Tietz-Straße at number four must be closed until Friday, September 6, 2024 inclusive.
First, the central library building will be completely gutted – probably by November 2024 – before the concrete renovation of the exterior facade begins. The shell construction work is to follow. The general renovation will give the city of Cologne a modern library with completely new building services, facade, roof covering and future-proof interior fittings. In late summer 2023, the administration commissioned a general contractor (GU) to renovate the central library, which immediately began preparations for implementation.
The central library at Josef-Haubrich-Hof was open to the public until the end of June 2024. Since July 1, several thousand boxes of media and several hundred meters of shelving have been packed there for the move to the interim building on Hohe Straße and for storage. The fact that this went so smoothly is not least thanks to the users of the city library: As part of the “All you can read” campaign, they borrowed more than half of all the central library’s media with specially extended deadlines, thus making the move easier. But complex technical systems such as external returns, self-service terminals, cash machines, sorting systems and customer PCs have also been dismantled and already relocated.
The interim library on the corner of Hohe Straße and Schildergasse will be opened in three stages starting in autumn. First, a collection area will be set up on the ground floor. All media holdings will then be available to citizens again there – but not yet in the usual open access arrangement. In the second stage, large parts of the actual library space will already be available to customers: the ground floor, the basement and the 1st floor. In the first half of 2025, the 2nd and 3rd floors will be opened as the final step with additional holdings, music library, piano room and social media studio, student center, maker space and a display area for the Literature in Cologne and Heinrich Böll Archives as well as the Germania Judaica.
The renovated central library at Josef-Haubrich-Hof is expected to be reopened for use in the first quarter of 2028, so that the library could be re-occupied and put into operation in the second quarter of 2028.
