Proposals for a new home for the Windsor Public Library's Central Branch Catalyst Project are now under review.
The library's downtown branch at 850 Ouellette Ave. E. was closed last year and moved to a temporary home in the Paul Martin Building at 185 Ouellette Ave., near Pitt Street in downtown Windsor.
Since then, six proposals were received from parties interested in building the new branch and work has now turned to reviewing offers.
"The proposals are impressive," says CEO Kitty Pope, who indicates that a committee will be making recommendations.
Pope says the location for the new branch is yet to be determined.
"There are folks who have a specific location and they have a specific idea about what a new central library should look like. There are other proposals that say we don't have a location, but we know what a new central library could look like," she says.
Pope says the proposals cover a wide range of options.
"There are small projects, there are big projects, there are projects with one or two partners, there's project with six or eight partners," she says. "So it's unbelievably broad. Quite frankly, I think it surprised everybody, the depth of the ideas."
A report with options on how to move forward is expected to come to city council in late March or early April.
Depending on how the process rolls out, the new library is expected to be completed sometime between 2025 and 2027.
With files from Rob Hindi