Check It Out: Central Library Restores Hours, Opens New Chapter After Massive Renovation

A year ago, Denver’s Central Library reopened after four years of renovations that closed most of the city’s largest library to the public and cost around $60 million. Since then, new and longtime residents alike have been wowed by the state-of-the-art, 540,000-square-foot facility that includes six public floors of books and resources, a newly sunny Schlessman Hall, and features like the teen library and ideaLAB, a makerspace where anyone can use 3D printers, sewing machines, recording equipment and more for free.

But interim director Jennifer Hoffman’s favorite thing about Central Library is simple: 728.

“Across three floors of this building’s circulating collections, the biggest circulating collection is nonfiction. Dewey decimal is how we arrange them,” Hoffman explains. “You have call numbers from 000 to 999. The 700s are art and recreation, the 720s are architecture and 728 is American vernacular architecture.”

Hoffman has been working with the Denver Public Library for nearly thirty years; she started as a shelver at the Ross Broadway branch (recently closed for its own renovations) in 1996 and is now leading the flagship Central Library as it finds its footing in a world very different from the one that existed prior to the renovations.

And last week, this library celebrated another win: It’s now open seven days a week.

Central Library debuted in 1956, after Denver commissioned the Fisher and Fisher/Burnham Hoyt firm to design a new Civic Center Park facility to replace the old Carnegie Library that today is the McNichols Building. But three decades later, Denver had outgrown that library, too, and in 1990, voters approved a $91.6 million bond to expand it — Michael Graves was the architect — as well as construct other branches.

By 2020, the new branch was looking old, too, and the city embarked on a major renovation during the pandemic. By the time Central Library fully reopened and was ready to return to seven-day-a-week service, the entire DPL system had gone through major staffing changes. Central Library Director Rachel Fewell left early this year to become the director of the Englewood Public Library, and Hoffman was made interim director during Denver’s hiring freeze.

Meanwhile, City Librarian Michelle Jeske stepped down at the end of April after a decade; former Colorado State Librarian Nicolle Davies started in that role in August and is settling into Denver’s busy library system.

“DPL is an independent agency, but still part of the city, so DPL was asked to respond to significant budget impacts,” Davies says. “We were asked to cut significant millions out of the budget in 2025 and then another $9.2 million out of the budget for 2026.”

Staffing and budget changes aren’t the only challenges. “We’re responding to changes in society,” Davies adds. “I think we’re in a very volatile society right now, and the public library is always one of the first recipients of that reality, because we serve everyone.”

That’s reflected in the 2025-2030 strategic plan that Davies is following. It includes new multilingual signage for easy navigation, enhanced design and layouts across the city’s 27 branches, new programming to encourage all ages to engage with the library, expanded collections in various languages, updated website navigation, new landscaping and more.

“There was a lot of effort, energy and thought put into this plan, and I would like for us to deliver on it,” Davies says. “I also have to be in reality about the fact that none of us could have predicted that 2025 would look the way it has so far.”

Existential doom aside, Denver’s libraries have it pretty good. In Davies’s former role with the state library system, part of the Department of Education, she focused on staff training, support and development for the many libraries across Colorado that have very few resources or capacity.

“There are 112 public library systems across the state of Colorado, and about 75 percent of those are small and rural,” Davies notes. “We’re sitting in this beautiful space in a system that has 27 branches, but most libraries across the state are one location, and maybe not open more than twenty hours a week.”

Her former position also supports school libraries and higher-education libraries, but Davies always found her sweet spot with public libraries and was happy to make that her total focus when the opportunity arose to become Denver City Librarian. “DPL has always been, to me, the top, most amazing system we have in the state,” Davies says.

And at a time when third spaces, places where people can gather and exist without having to pay any money to be there, are becoming increasingly rare, it’s important to have a strong public library system. “Entertainment feels like such a stretch of luxury now,” Davies says. “How do you not have a third space like the library? …If you can’t buy groceries, you’re not worrying about, ‘Oh, can I take my kids to do something fun this weekend?’ The library is that space.”

It’s also a space to learn how to create a resume, possibly find a job, use free WiFi or even get free Narcan kits. Central Library has 385,000 items in its circulating collection and another million items in its special collections and archives.

“There are so many entry points that the library represents. We’ve always done that work, but when we’re literally talking about, ‘Do you have money for food?’ It makes what we do even more critical,” Davies says. “I always think there’s something really beautiful about the idea of everybody feeling welcomed and respected in a space, and I think that’s more important than ever in this day and age.”

Hoffman considers libraries as “everyone’s premier pre-paid service,” something that everyone contributes to and can have access to. “It belongs to all of us. We buy a soda at the gas station, and we’re contributing to the tax base,” she says.

One year after Central Library’s reopening, Hoffman says things are going well. “When you make major changes to a space that’s been around like this and been beloved by the staff and customers, you hope you get things right, and they really got a lot right with this building,” she says. “People have been so happy to come back. It was so much fun on November 3 last year to open those doors and have people pour in and see all the changes.”

But for her, the most impactful feature of Central Library is all the open space that welcomes people from all walks of life. “If you want to know what society looks like, step into your library,” she advises.

And if you think you know Central Library, come back and check it out again. “We have moved every single book,” Hoffman says. “You can discover things in a new way.”

Learn more about Central Library and its programs at denverlibrary.org/content/central-library or by visiting it at 10 West 14th Avenue.