Rodrigo Huerta Aguirre –
in the Downtown East, Toronto Public Library announced in December the designation of 339 Queen Street East as the site for a new district branch, scheduled to open in late 2028 or early 2029.
Once construction is done, St. Lawrence will wave goodbye to its neighbourhood library at 131 Front Street East.
Serving at least 100,000 residents of Moss Park, Corktown and St. Lawrence neighbourhoods, the new library is to have larger collections, extended hours, dedicated youth spaces and community programming. The 30,000-square-feet hub will be over six times larger than the “drastically undersized” St. Lawrence branch, which “is unable to meet the needs of the community,” a TPL spokesperson told the bridge.
The St. Lawrence branch also suffers from water leaks and seasonal heating problems, on many occasions temporarily limiting service hours. Plans to replace it date to 2008 with a proposal to move to a former TPL-owned processing centre on Front Street East.
In 2012, TPL acquired the First Parliament site (271 Front Street East) and planned to relocate the branch, but nine years later the Ontario government expropriated the lands to the construction of the Ontario Line subway.
Another opportunity arrived in 2022 when 125 The Esplanade – popularly known as the tent south of St. Lawrence Market – was selected, with an estimated timeframe of six years and a cost of $34 million. But in July last year, the city purchased a site that Toronto Centre Councillor Chris Moise suggested would come at a “significantly shorter timeframe and at a lower cost.”
Acknowledging that the new library will be a 15-minute walk from the Front Street branch, TPL says it was “limited with respect to spaces that were available that could accommodate a library of this scale and scope.” TPL says community consultations on the project and its design choices should occur in the first half of this year.
The original building’s design dates back to 1907 when it housed the Home Furniture Carpet Co., Ltd., a department store that operated in Toronto for over 90 years. Architect Henry Simpson adopted the Chicago School of Architecture style, making the store stand out among the Victorian-style Corktown houses. In 2017, the City of Toronto designated 339 Queen Street East as a heritage site.
The development’s heritage impact statement promises a “practice of minimal intervention, ensur[ing] that the integrity of the property’s cultural heritage value is conserved.”
Construction for the new library, set to begin in early 2027, may coincide with building a 49-storey mixed-use condo next door at Queen and Parliament Streets. A rezoning application for that site was received in November, and a community consultation has been set for Monday February 12 at Regent Park Community Centre. TPL says it doesn’t anticipate any construction conflicts between the two projects.
