The scope of the MacKenzie Street library was reduced due to rising costs leading up to its 1952 grand opening, which the city’s current elected officials are planning to do again with the Junction East Cultural Hub, whose costs similarly ballooned
There are numerous parallels between the MacKenzie Street main branch library build and the Junction East Cultural Hub library/art gallery debate currently taking place in Greater Sudbury.
The MacKenzie Street main branch library was initially proposed in the 1940s at 28,185 square feet, but approximately 11,191 square feet of space was cut from the project by the time its grand opening was celebrated in 1952. Lefebvre’s February motion requested that city administrators look at alternative projects to reduce its $98.5-million budget to $65 million, and by his estimation shrink its footprint down to 65,000 square feet.
Their job, he said, is “incredibly complex, because it's not just the library, they have so many different stakeholders, they have so many different interest groups that they need to support and their job is to weigh all of those different needs from across their community and achieve an appropriate balance.
Before the MacKenzie Street libraryThe city’s first library opened in 1912, and consisted of a single room on Elm Street, though it wasn’t public, with members required to pay a fee. The long road to approving the MacKenzie Street libraryTalks of a new, permanent library building started taking place in the early ’40s, around the time the city’s library opened in rented space on Cedar Street in 1942.
Another library leader said they will “aim at the expansion for other cultural aspects in our new building.” By March 26, 1949, the library’s leadership told the Sudbury Star that the existing library was overcrowded, and that there wasn’t enough room for the children’s section. “Taxes are high enough now and there is no indication that they will be coming down soon,” resident J.D. MacPhail said. “In the end, the ratepayers will have to foot the bill for the library site.”
A December 1949 plebiscite asked whether voters favoured a $300,000 debenture to build a new library, and whether they preferred MacKenzie Street or Larch Street location. At the time, a development at the corner of Paris and Elm streets was proposed, where the downtown transit terminal, LCBO and TIm Hortons are currently located. The Paris Park location was the former site of a Canadian Tire store, and a multi-storey complex with offices, condominiums and a new main branch library was proposed.
Billed by the Star as “one of the longest and most acrimonious debates at Sudbury city council” ended with city council agreeing to spend $2.1 million on renovations to the MacKenzie branch, and pulled $1.8 million from the library’s building renovation fund. Meanwhile, in 2017, Vista Hospitality dusted off an idea from the ’90s and proposed a new main branch library be built in the Rainbow Centre . In June 2022, city council suspended Junction West and greenlit a $98.5-million Junction East Cultural Hub project.
Lefebvre said the new build would reduce it to approximately 65,000 square feet, and suggested that existing infrastructure might be reconfigured. The mayor also clarified that he remains committed to a library project being downtown. A new central library project to replace the MacKenzie Street building was initially proposed at $8.3 million in the ’90s, and jumped to $42 million with the initial Junction East project several years ago, later updated to $46.5 million and then doubling to $98.5 million with the Junction East Cultural Hub. That is, prior to Lefebvre’s February motion to scale it down to $65 million.
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