Beginning today, the first major renovations in two decades will close the city’s Mottet Library in southeast Tacoma for the next three months.
“The building is essentially being gutted and rearranged,” city library spokesman David Domkoski said Wednesday. “Everything is being painted and parts of the floor are being torn up to add wiring for more computer stations.”
Already, a new roof with skylights has been added to the Mottet branch at 3523 East G Street.
Other renovations will include upgrading the building’s windows and exterior bricks, installing more interior lighting, updating restrooms to accommodate patrons with disabilities, transforming the meeting room into a public service space and lowering the shelving to improve sightlines, Domkoski said. In all, the renovations will cost about $600,000 and raise the number of Mottet’s public computer stations to 20, he said. Costs are covered by the library system’s maintenance fund and part of a late patron’s willed donation.
“We’re excited,” Domkoski added. “It’s going to make the library more user-friendly and accessible.”
The last time the Mottet branch was renovated was in 1990, after voters approved a library bond measure three years earlier, Domkoski said.
Library officials say Mottet’s renovations are essential, given the added traffic the branch has drawn in recent months from patrons displaced by the closure of the nearby Swan Creek branch. In January, Tacoma Public Libraries closed Swan Creek and the Martin Luther King Jr. branch in Central Tacoma due to a budget shortfall.
The Mottet branch is expected to reopen on Jan. 10, Domkoski said. In the meantime, patrons are asked to visit the Moore Library at 215 S. 56th Street – about two miles to the south of Mottet.
Lewis Kamb: 253-597-8542 lewis.kamb@thenewstribune.com blog.thenewstribune.com/politics Twitter: @lewiskamb
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