A £3.7m project to transform Bolton library will see the children’s area treble in size and a new café built. In December 2021 Bolton was offered up to £22M of town’s fund’ government cash in order to ‘level up’ and regenerate town centres.
Bolton Council’s planning committee unanimously approved the final plans for the listed Le Mans Crescent building. The work, which will include the installation of a mezzanine floor in the building, is expected to begin in September and take around a year to complete.
During the closure period the library will be temporarily housed at Crompton Place shopping mall on the site of the former New Look unit. Sam Elliott, head of libraries and museums in Bolton spoke in support of the plans to the committee.
She, said: “In 2019, the central library and museum welcomed more than 600,000 visitors.
“The redevelopment will reinforce the library’s position as one of the town’s anchor institutions. The project will attract extra visitors to the library and museum and we will provide a new café space to increase footfall and revenue.
“We will modernise the library space and create an experience led redevelopment of the children’s library with the space trebling in size. There will be more modern toilet facilities and a changing places area to cater for people with disabilities.
“We will also upgrade the mechanical and electrical services. The will be a new mezzanine floor which will enable us to reconfigure our layout.”
Mrs Elliott said the the most important result of the redevelopment would be an improvement in services for residents of all ages
“In our children’s area our current space does not meet demand,” she explained.
“The transformation will promote literacy for children. If we can get children reading at the earliest opportunity they will become more successful adults.
“Our community use will be much improved. People use the library for much more than borrowing books. Many people visit us for chair based exercise, scrabble clubs, knit an natter and other reading, job and craft groups.”
The year-long temporary home for the library will not affect the redevelopment plans for Crompton Place which continue to be explored by Bolton Council.
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