Smoke, soot and new safety concerns prolong Nashville’s Main Library closure

Nashville’s Main Library has been shuttered since June after a fire broke out in the adjacent parking garage and badly damaged two floors and multiple cars. Now, three months after the initial closure, there’s still no reopening date in sight — and some programs are experiencing lengthy disruptions.

The library has been undergoing a deep clean to remove soot and smoke damage. Earlier this summer, Library Director Terri Luke said it was this cleaning, along with the coordination of repairs, that was causing delays. But at the library’s board meeting on Tuesday, Luke said there’s now another factor:

“Because walls had to be opened, they identified further work on the building’s fire safety systems,” Luke told the board.

She specified that the fire safety issues are located within the building’s conference center — which, along with the auditorium, is where the bulk of the library’s fire damage occurred. The library had planned to reopen while keeping the auditorium and conference center closed for repairs. Luke now says that the library cannot open until they complete the fire safety work.

“I don’t want to put a date out when we don’t know what that date is,” Luke said. “Once the work is actually done then we also have to have independent third-party inspectors who will need to certify this work before we reopen. So we’ll have to have [Metro Codes] and we’ll have to have the fire marshal come out as well.”

Following the blaze, the library had briefly announced a July 29 reopening. But as that date came and went the library has pulled back communications about a possible reopening timeline.

While most Main Library programming has moved to other branches, some initiatives have been disrupted.

• Limitless Libraries, which connects Metro Nashville Public School students with Metro’s greater collection, has been put on pause, given that materials are distributed through the Main Branch. The library is working to relocate that program to the Edmondson Pike branch next month.
• The Library of Things, which allows patrons to borrow items ranging from toolkits to cake pans to instruments, has also been out of commission — as the “things” are stored at the Main branch.

At the board meeting, members noted that “the community has adjusted to the situation” based on patron data. However, the one thing that has fallen is wireless data usage, which Luke attributed to the displacement of unhoused patrons. This is a group that is, arguably, most impacted by the closure, as many people rely on the downtown branch for things like computer access and a cool place to stay during the summer.

“We have such a large number of customers — because you know we have people experiencing homelessness — and so a large number use that wireless at the main library all the time and we haven’t been opened,” Luke said. “So that’s why it’s down.”