and is now home to a physical collection of 450,000 books, more than 30 free community meeting areas, a performance hall, café, outdoor plazas, a children’s library, dedicated spaces for teens, recording studios, and much more. In 2018, Architectural Digest chose the Central Library as one of the “most anticipated projects” of the year, as well as “one of the world’s most futuristic libraries.” After opening in November of that year, it was visited by nearly half a million visitors in its first 100 days. The next year, the library was featured New York Times’ “52 Places to Travel” in 2019 and received more than one million visitors in the first year. CMLC also led the delivery of that project, that time on behalf of the City of Calgary and the Calgary Public Library. Over the five-year construction program, they were able to deliver it on schedule and under budget. Valued at roughly $245 million, it remains one of their most significant projects to date, with approximately 1.7 million construction hours and as many as 200 workers on site at any one time. “That was such an interesting project,” Clare says. “The original masterplan did not include the library, and the site was a tricky one because the LRT runs underneath it. It was just a surface parking lot that sat adjacent to the back of City Hall. When the opportunity for the library came up, that turned out to be just the right type of project that could physically connect City Hall and Downtown and East Village.” “We had the opportunity to work with the design team and come up with a facility that was not only a beautiful, functional library, but that could also THE CONSTRUCTION SOURCE CANADA
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