MILTON-FREEWATER – The Milton-Freewater Public Library will close its doors Friday, and when it reopens in a month it will be in the new library building adjacent to City Hall.

The down time will give library staff and volunteers time to move the 38,000 books, videos, CDs and other items from the old Carnegie building to the new facility.

The old building will close at 5 p.m. Friday and the new building will re-open April 1.

While the library is closed, patrons can return books to either the walk-up book return next to the Eighth Avenue entrance or at a drive-up book return in the new parking lot behind City Hall. The new book returns will start operation March 1.

“We can hardly stand it, we kept waiting for it and are getting really excited about it,” Library Director Bob Jones said. “Now that the building is 99.999 percent completed, it just looks beautiful in and out.”

With the move the library is gaining 8,800 square feet – from 4,000 square feet in the Carnegie Building to 12,800 square feet, he said. The library is bringing some items out of storage they did not have shelf space for in the old building, but there are no plans to add new books immediately.

“We don’t want to fill the building on opening day, we want to grow into it,” Jones said.

While the new library won’t have tons of new reading material, the building will have several new features, Jones said, such as more computers, increased public access to the Internet, a small group study room and a large meeting room for City Council meetings.

The library also is exploring adding an espresso bar and an ATM to the building. The board is looking for someone to operate the espresso bar and a financial institution willing to put an ATM in the building.

Jones also expects the adult and children programs to expand now that there is more space.

The board is still looking for volunteers to help run the library and set up and stock shelves.

“Even though the building is finished we’re still raising money because a lot of money raised in the form of outstanding pledges,” he said. “We still need to raise some to pay off the bank.”

The future of the old building is still under discussion. The city is soliciting proposals to be turned in for possibilities, Assistant City Manager Linda Hall said. The deadline for proposals is March 10.

Right now the city is considering relocating the chamber of commerce to the building and making it into a visitor center.