‘It’s about time’: Highland Park library expansion set to break ground

Construction for the more than 7,500-square-foot addition to the Highland Park Library is set to begin next week.

Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering, State Sen. Julie Morrison, State Rep. Bob Morgan, Library Board trustees, city officials and a crowd of nearly 85 others met outside the public library Friday morning, June 6, for a groundbreaking ceremony celebrating the incoming expansion to the building’s footprint.

“The shovels will just now be hitting the ground for what began in earnest more than a decade ago with the simple but powerful idea that Highland Park deserves a library that reflects our community’s changing needs,” said Robert Olian, president of the Highland Park Library Board of Trustees. 

“I’m just super excited that we’ve gotten to this point where we can provide a world-class library expansion to this incredible community,” Rotering said, adding, “They know that this is a community that values and loves education and reading. In the past, my understanding was that when new items came into the children’s department, items had to be taken out because there wasn’t enough space. Let’s give our kids the world.”

Highland Park City Council voted 5-2 in January to approve the library expansion, which will add two new ADA-accessible restrooms, a three-floor elevator, a climate-controlled archives room, a creative studio and a 175-seat community room that will double the amount of meeting space in the building.

An expanded youth department will also provide approximately 25% more collections space and 50% more activity space to the building, a city news release said. The library will remain largely open to the public while the project expands the west side of the building near the intersection of Laurel and St. Johns avenue.

The overall expansion will cost approximately $10 million and is expected to wrap up in the late fall of 2026, Olian said. Funding was sourced from grants, a city bond and the library’s special reserve fund.

Highland Park contracted an architecture firm in 2017 to assess the library’s needs, and city officials subsequently utilized info from that study, focus group sessions and community surveys to create a strategic plan for the building’s future — though efforts to expand the library extend back more than 11 years, Rotering estimated. 

Though Highland Park has a larger population than nearby Deerfield, Lake Forest, Wilmette, Kenilworth and Northbrook, all of those municipalities have expanded their libraries more recently than Highland Park. Those other libraries, except for Lake Forest’s, also boast more square feet per capita than Highland Park’s.

The Highland Park Public Library receives 700 daily visitors on average, and youth participation has increased approximately 23% between 2003 and 2019, a city website detailed. Strategic plan priorities included increasing accessibility, expanding youth services and creating more meeting space for local groups. 

Michael Pickard, a resident and Highland Park Public Library volunteer, said he’s most excited for the expansion’s new creative studio. As he’s sought 3D printers in other area libraries for his personal board game project, he hopes to take advantage of more accessible technology and staff in a local setting. 

“I’ve surveyed a lot of different libraries to help support designs that I make and things that I build, and it’s a little embarrassing to have to go to another town to get something printed. Although they have some capability here, it’s kind of hidden away in the backroom,” Pickard said. “It’s about time.”

Lisa Rector, who has worked in Highland Park Public Library’s member services department since 1994, said she’s been waiting for the building’s expansion “forever.”

She believes the addition will help the library service more people, particularly children in the youth services department. 

“I’ve seen what little space they’ve had to deal with over the decades and they do so many amazing things with small resources. I mean they are incredible,” Rector said of the library’s youth services department. “So I’m glad they’re finally going to get a place where they can expand and flourish.”

The Highland Park Public Library first opened in 1931 as a 20,000-square-foot building. Two previous additions in 1960 and 1976 brought the facility to its current square footage of 47,050 square feet.

A 2020 interior remodeling created a youth storytime room, a middle school room and five other group spaces.

In voting against the public library’s expansion alongside Councilmember Andrés Tapia in January, Councilmember Annette Lidawer cited her concerns that the addition will remove its front lawn. The expansion necessitated the recent relocation of the “Miss Nitro” sculpture which has sat outside the library since 1973.

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