Community Updates: Tulsa City-County Library Plans Substantial Improvements To Buildings

There's a lot ahead for the Tulsa City-County Library, including several new library buildings and some major improvements over what was there before.

TCCL's Chief Operating Officer Ellen Cummings joined News On 6 to explain more. This has got to be exciting for the library system. We'll start with Bronson.

Dave: This has got to be exciting for the library system. We'll start with Bronson.

Cummings: Bronson Brookside is going to move just down the street from the current Brookside library, we have a wonderful donation that allowed us to do that funded with savings and donors, obviously donors, and we broke ground on June 27. With a great groundbreaking party, and this will actually double more than double it will go from 7,000 square feet to 15,000 square feet. One of the things that we've learned is that people really want their library to be a community gathering place...

Dave: I'm seeing playgrounds

Cummings: The playgrounds, we're going to have more outdoor reading space and more outdoor space for the kids. But also, those meeting groups inside so we have a much-improved meeting room space. The current Brookside meeting room space is always booked. We have tutoring with smaller meeting groups, and meeting rooms so that the tutors can meet with their students and people can work on group projects. We're very excited about that.

Dave: I want to talk about Rudisill as well, new building, and there's a lot of history here returning to Greenwood

Cummings: Yeah, we have a wonderful, we had a wonderful groundbreaking on June 14, for that location. This is our force return to Greenwood

Dave: These renderings a just amazing (See in Video)

Cummings: it's going to be 33,000 square feet. Much improved, a bigger American African American Resource Center space. And in conjunction with that, we're going to have a genealogy satellite focused on African American genealogy. We're very excited about that. That is one thing that the community really responded to and talked about in our early meeting. So we're really excited to bring that back. We're gonna have a space upstairs, that is very malleable. So you know, moveable chairs. It's gonna be just an incredible space with a retractable wall. So we can have two meeting room groups or we can have one big huge with a wonderful view of downtown.

Dave: When are you hoping to open Bronson and Rudisill at this point?

Cummings: So, Bronson will open it'll take less time to build. Okay, so it will actually open in 2025 and then in early 2026 for our new Rudisill.

Dave: And you're hoping to get donations because this is not going to be federally funded. You have to raise this money to build these buildings.

Cummings: We've raised the majority but we really want to encourage our customers to contribute any amount that they feel drawn to.

Dave: Okay, so back to school is so wild. August 20 is when TPS goes back to school. You have tons of resources. Tell us a little bit about that. You can pick up some handouts at the library. What do you offer back-to-school tutoring?

Cummings: We offer tutoring. So we have the after school homework club offered at we are increasing from four locations to six locations. I got the right page. You do. Absolutely. And it's a wonderful resource all free.