The surprise resignation of Saskatoon Public Library CEO Carol Cooley comes at a crucial time in the long journey to a new downtown branch.
In late of May of 1965, now nearly 60 years ago, demolition crews began to tear down Saskatoon’s downtown library and the fire hall next door.
The new library would be built on the same site on the south side of 23rd Street for $1.48 million and would open almost exactly one year later. Despite numerous plans for expansion or a new location, the same library, named for longtime chief librarian France Morrison, remains today.
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Three decades ago, Morrison weighed in on the need for a new downtown library in an interview with the Saskatoon Sun, saying she preferred expansion at the existing library by adding a third floor over the board’s preference to move to the south downtown.
When Morrison was interviewed in 1993, and the need for a new or expanded location was already rising in urgency, Sandra Anderson served as chief librarian. Anderson was succeeded by Zenon Zuzak in 1995.
When Zuzak left in 2014 after nearly 20 years leading the library (the title was changed from chief librarian to director), he lamented the lack of progress on a new downtown branch.
“We’ll see that in the Saskatoon skyline — there will be a new central library,” Zuzak told the StarPhoenix. “It will happen.“
A decade ago, Zuzak pointed out that in the early 1990s, the cost for a new location was estimated at about $30 million, but had likely ballooned to between $70 million and $100 million.
In September 2019, when plans for a new downtown library were finally revealed, the cost had risen to $154 million — more than 100 times the cost of demolishing the old library in 1965 and building a new one.
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Council forced the library board to scale back the project in 2019 by limiting the borrowing it would approve to lower the price to $134 million. Today, $1.48 million would be considered a bargain just for demolition.
Notably, the building that still stands today, despite its many deficiencies, was built in less than a year.
As for going without a downtown library for an extended period of time, that now seems a distinct possibility. And yet another library leader will leave before construction starts on a new facility.
When Saskatoon Public Library CEO Carol Cooley was hired in 2015, she cited the new downtown library as among her priorities. Last week, though, the library board announced Cooley’s resignation for unspecified reasons in a post on the library website directed to the “Saskatoon Community.”
The board announced that it had “received” Cooley’s resignation and stressed that the downtown library remains “a top priority.”
While no further details were provided on Cooley’s departure, we may never know how voluntary her resignation was until the 2024 city hall salaries are released in the summer of 2025.
But, usually, we only hear that a key city hall leader has departed when our local government deems it necessary to inform us at all.
Cooley joins fire Chief Morgan Hackl and police Chief Troy Cooper, who are both retiring, and the game of musical chairs at the top of Saskatoon Transit, not to mention Mayor Charlie Clark, who announced last week that he will not run again.
Yet we can read a little into the timing of Cooley’s farewell, a week after the board announced that the contract to build the new library had been awarded to Ledcor Construction Ltd.
In September, the board revealed that the project had been paused as it suddenly dawned on the library braintrust that the same inflationary factors that had catapulted the cost of similar projects into the stratosphere would also affect the library’s construction budget.
The board advised people through a prepared statement that the design would need to be rejigged to fit within the budget. Three years earlier, we were informed that the design contract had been awarded to consultants for nearly $5 million.
That now appears to be lost money, since it seems unlikely that the current design — as inspiring as it is — can be built within the budget. The Ledcor contract stipulates more than $17 million in construction services. Little else was revealed about the process to award this contract.
Construction was supposed to begin last summer and be completed in the spring of 2026. Now, we’re told the project will be recalibrated and construction will start this summer and be finished at an unspecified time in 2027.
The current building has been sold and will change hands at the end of 2026, so Saskatoon could well be without a downtown library for some time.
Too bad a library can no longer be built in less than a year for $1.48 million.
Phil Tank is the digital opinion editor at the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
ptank@postmedia.com
twitter.com/thinktankSK
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