It is an exciting time at the Huntley Area Public Library. We are thrilled to continue our reopening procedures and look forward to gradually providing more services in the future, as the pandemic situation allows. Meanwhile, progress on the new Huntley Area Public Library continues at a rapid pace.
All of the foundations for the new addition have been poured and the structural steel is in place. The new building’s wood trusses have also been installed. If you have passed by the library during the last week in June, you may have noticed that there is some roof sheathing work happening and the building is really taking shape. One of the main goals of the project is to get the exterior shell built to allow the trades to work inside an enclosed space.
Following the Independence Day holiday, underground interior plumbing work will begin in the new section. The week after, we anticipate that underground interior electrical will commence. Also, the addition’s RTUs (rooftop units for air conditioning) are on-site now and will be installed as soon as conditions permit.
The next step will entail more steel beams that will be put through existing walls on the east side of the original facility to help with the process of joining the current library building with the new addition. This is an important aspect of the overall project, but it means that the library will lose more usable space. At a time when social distancing is a public norm, losing additional space due to construction presents significant operational challenges, so please bear with us.
There is more happening inside the original building, as well. Right now, crews are in the basement doing demolition work on boilers and other heating system components. Since we do not need to heat the library right now, this is the perfect time to complete such work.
Overall, the project is on-time and on-budget. The weather has been relatively good for construction and supply chains have remained relatively uninterrupted through the pandemic. Provided there are no major issues or surprises, we anticipate the addition will be completed in April of 2021. After that, Phase 2 of the building project will begin and the original building will undergo a renovation with a completion date for the entire project sometime in the winter of 2021.
