Glen Park Branch Library

For decades the Glen Park branch was a rented shopfront. The November 2000 bond proposal describes it plainly: at 653 Chenery Street, operating under a lease agreement on private property, with a total floor area of less than 1,000 square feet, open five days a week. The library's own minutes show the neighbourhood pressing for something better across two generations. In the earlier round, the Glen Park Property Owners Association and the Glen Park School parent-teacher association wrote asking that another location be found well in advance of the widening of Bosworth Street, which would force the branch to vacate its quarters — and residents said they would accept a smaller building if that were the only alternative to losing a branch library in the district altogether. By 2001 the commission was still searching: a member of the public argued that an owner's refusal to sell the "Kelly" site, the one the community favoured, should not remove it from consideration, and a neighbourhood meeting was called that October to weigh the options. The branch's public art was reworked as well — the Arts Commission moved to rescind the contract, capped at $36,000, that it had authorised with the artist team originally recommended by the branch's community selection panel.