By admin 
The future North Sacramento-Hagginwood Library is beginning to take shape in the former Sacramento News & Review building.
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The exterior of the building has been repainted. The former SN&R sign has been removed and replaced with library signage. A new sidewalk monument has even displayed the word “open” for the library even if the opening isn’t expected until early 2027.
The Sacramento Public Library Authority and the city are likely to receive the building in the coming weeks from Otto Construction, which has been renovating the building for much of the past year. Once the library and the city have the building, they can begin the work of creating a functioning library and neighborhood hub.
“We will be able to have the books delivered and shelved, and we can outfit all the equipment and technology and other things,” said library director Peter Coyl. “That takes three to six months sometimes.”
Coyl was on-hand recently along with representatives of Otto Construction, who showed the building’s progress.
From grocery store to newsroom to library
County records show that the 19,100-square-foot building at 1124 Del Paso Blvd. was constructed in 1960.
The building operated early on as a Van’s Market, run by brothers John and Andy Van Horn. Former Sacramento City Councilman Rob Kerth has lived walking distance from the store for much of his life and said his family shopped frequently there.
“It was just a real, normal supermarket, like you’d see anywhere,” Kerth said. He is in the process of reopening his longtime family business, Iceland Ice Skating Rink, up the street from the building.
Van’s Market closed in the 1980s. A subsequent business, Glory Food Mart, went bankrupt in 1993.
The building sat vacant for several years before SN&R relocated to it in 2009. Longtime SN&R publisher Jeff vonKaenel, who recently transferred its website to the Sacramento Observer, said then-Councilmember Sandy Sheedy recruited his publication to the building.
“It was an old supermarket that was in pretty bad shape,” vonKaenel said. “Sandy helped us navigate that through the system. But then we had the idea of doing a green building on a budget.”
The newsroom was shuttered by the COVID-19 pandemic and sold to the city in 2021 with the understanding it would become a library. Funding issues delayed the start of renovations, which were underway by December.
Nicholas Foley, a project manager for Otto Construction, said his team was able to reuse roughly half of the existing structure, such as its original trusses. He said his team removed some mold and rot and did a complete re-roofing.
Foley said removing the old SN&R sign from the building “was pretty straightforward.” The sign is now being stored by the Center for Sacramento History.
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During a tour of the library construction site earlier this month, Foley showed off the public area with empty shelves, a small room for the Friends of the Library and, where SN&R reporters once sat, nonpublic area for library staff.
“It was less than a year, so a quick project, but it was a fun one,” Foley said. “It’s really rewarding to do a library and get to do something that the community can really utilize.”
Otto Construction CEO Allison Otto said her company was “just excited to turn it over” so the library can “get it up and going by next year.”
Sacramento City Councilman Roger Dickinson, who also lives within walking distance from the future library, was pleased with how the work had been going.
“It looks pretty darn good from the outside,” said Dickinson.
What it takes to open a library
The existing North Sacramento-Hagginwood Library operates out of a roughly 4,000-square-foot space less than a mile east of the new space on Del Paso Boulevard.
Coyl said that the existing location would eventually close to transfer its collection. Getting the new library open isn’t as simple, though, as simply trucking boxes of books down the boulevard.
“For reopening a library, we have to order all the books,” Coyl said. “There’s about 20,000 books in a collection.”
According to Coyl, the library will include a Maker Space that could be open after hours, a space for teenagers and a Library of Things (objects that include tools, kitchenware and musical instruments).
The library system reopened Martin Luther King Library in south Sacramento in mid-August, after an $8 million renovation, according to Coyl. He estimated that the cost for the new North Sacramento-Hagginwood Library was around $15 million.
The library is near other promising projects, including Iceland’s reconstruction, a potential train station behind the Sacramento Employment and Training Agency and a 2,000-person music venue in the former LIMN warehouse.
Dickinson said he’d pushed city and library staff to get the new library open as soon as possible. He said the library was an important piece of Del Paso Boulevard and North Sacramento’s revitalization.
“What I have learned over the years is that libraries are signature public assets, that even people who don’t go to the library very often really value having a library in the neighborhood,” Dickinson said. “And of course, it’s indispensable for a lot of kids and families.”
For vonKaenel, the building’s future makes him happy.
“The thought that kids and other people are going to be able to go through our building and experience the joy that we had there in a library, that is just a dream come true,” vonKaenel said.
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