Renovations add room for group entertainment and laptop users

When Cedar Park City Council meetings relocated to the new city hall complex in April, it left a vacant space at the library. New designs in the former meeting room now reflect one of the space's primary uses, a children's entertainment and story area.

"We wanted to recapture that room back for our use," Library Director Pauline Lam said. "It was very crowded in the children's library, so we decided they can use that room for all the story times and so on, but it needed to be updated. So we cut back the stage about 4 feet, repainted the room and changed the accent wall color, got new carpet, and took down all the wallpaper."

The library's newly decorated community room will host an average of about 2,700 visitors per month, Lam said. The space is also used for adult library programs such as Senior Cinema and is rented for a fee to the public for meetings and training.

Lam said repurposing the room allowed more space within the children's library.

"Since all the programs moved to the old council chambers, we removed the wall that separates the library and the program room," she said. "So now it's all open, and there's more shelving space."

The city allocated more than $40,000 for the library renovations, including an expanded Internet cafe outside the children's program area. Unlike inside the library, food and drinks are allowed in the cafe, which will soon have more tables and chairs.

"People always want to use their own laptop. In the library, we don't have enough tables, and the Internet Cafe is a nice area for families or anyone who wants to sit and work or read," Lam said. "We don't allow people to bring food and drink into the library, so sometimes people stay here all day long to finish a project, so that will be a nice space for them to use their own laptop."

Over the next six months, the library will get more chairs and tables for the Internet Cafe area, and Lam said she hopes to find display art for the walls. City spokeswoman Jennie Huerta said all of the renovations will allow even more residents and visitors to enjoy the library.

"This is one of the busiest and most-used parts of the city, not just by people who live here but also from all over the region," Huerta said. "They have a lot of performances in that room, and they had some of them there before, but now it's just such a better place for that."