When Judith Hare talks about what the new central library can bring to Halifax, the list of possibilities could lap the current Spring Garden location 10 times over.The Halifax Public Libraries CEO has been with us since 1996, and she knows what the public wants: new amenities that aren’t being offered downtown by the current library system.
“The library is increasingly becoming more like the town centre,” says Hare. “We’re about linking people, and introducing people to a lot of different ideas, and this space is a really crucial piece of doing that.”
Halifax Public Libraries held public consultations in the form of meetings, surveys and focus groups, and found that there is a need for comfortable seating areas, individual study space, group study space, a cafe and a performance venue.
The Spring Garden Road-Queen Street Area Joint Public Lands Plan dictates that the new library has to include 7,000 square feet of retail, but since the library’s still in the planning stages nothing has been detailed.
While better seating, study spaces and a cafe seem to have a home in the new plan, the idea of a performance space is just that—an idea. Hare and Susan McLean, HPL’s director of public services, have met with organizations to get a feel for what Halifax’s performing arts community needs as a venue, but so far it’s just been a collection of hopes.
“We have to look at what [the library’s] needs are, and do they fit with what a professional group might need,” says McLean. Hare adds that the performance space would serve primarily as an auditorium for the library, as HPL can’t host anything downtown of significant size. The plan is to see if it’s possible to build inclusions for dance and theatre groups, with a 200- to 250-seat theatre.
“We don’t see the library as being a totally fitted-out professional stage with back-of-house and all those kinds of facilities, but for the small performances,” says Hare.
That’s not the impression Paul Caskey, artistic director of Live Art Dance Productions, got from his meeting with Hare before Christmas, though. Caskey says he realizes it was simply a consultation, but he was unaware they didn’t want to include professional details.
“What I fear is that we get a space that only half serves the professional arts needs,” says Caskey. “Things like the Bella Rose and the new Citadel High School auditorium—the newest ‘theatres,’ I’ll say in quotation marks, in our city, I mean they don’t have any of the stuff that professional theatres require, i.e. change rooms, backstage space.
“If they go halfway, then I think they do themselves an injustice, and they do the community an injustice,” says Caskey. “It really depends on what their objectives are. If it is to make a theatre, then make a theatre—make a good one.”
Hare and McLean say they realize they can’t meet everyone’s needs, as the budget limits what can be done with the space. They’re ready to make their architect recommendation to the city, and that council meeting is tentatively scheduled for March 9. Hare promises another round of public consultation—another chance to say what you think are library frills, and what are necessities.
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This article appears in Mar 4-10, 2010.
You know, this is a great story that I hear talked about all the time in the theatre community: not enough space, and poorly designed and thought-out spaces. If the library follows the path of Citadel High, they might as well not bother. But if they spend the little bit (well, a lot) extra it takes to make a big room into a working black box or theatre space, then it’ll make all the difference to an artistic community that seems to be constantly struggling to find a space appropriate to their needs.
I’m impressed that this topic got the coverage that it did, but it’s too bad it couldn’t have more space in the paper. Holly’s well researched piece touches on all the important topics in the library issue, but this is obviously a story that’s fallen under the heavy hand of an editor who just didn’t have the space needed to do this piece justice. That said, I’m glad it’s covered, and hope to see more.
There are just so many issues surrounding the new library–this was just one of many to cover. And there are many more: sustainability, the collection itself, etc.–we didn’t have room for. But this was just an intro piece; the intention is to continue following this topic with many more articles. You’ll be hearing from Holly, my heavy hand and this performance space in the future.
Sue: I had only read the story behind Holly’s link posted on her Facebook page. I had no idea this was an entire issue, and that there was more to the debate than just Holly’s story, which still stands on its own as a great piece of journalism on an almost-untouched subject. Having now read every library piece in the issue, I realize now that Holly’s piece was not an attempt to be comprehensive on the subject of theatre spaces in Halifax, but to register the theatre community’s concern about spaces in regards to the construction of the new Halifax Central Library. It does that expertly, and the team of writers who explored every other facet of the library, including hopes, history, design and concerns have done an excellent job.
My comment about your heavy-handedness was crass, uninformed, unfounded, and knee-jerk. Like many commenters on newspaper websites, I made the poor choice of writing a comment before I’d read all of what turned out to be a thorough and complex investigation of a subject that has the potential to affect all Haligonians in one way or another. I sincerely apologise.
no biggie, I think it’s just showing that this library is going to mean a lot to a lot of people and that we have some serious deficiencies, culturally, in the city.
In all the articles about libraries, I’m surprised it seems the Woodlawn Library was over looked. For decades it was the smallest branch with the highest population yet its move to the old Empire Theatres building wasn’t mentioned or the fact it will be keeping one of the theatres for showings. This has been too long in coming but it will be great when done.