CROWN POINT | Workers knocked down a former karate school building Thursday to clear the final hurdle to the construction of a new library.
The karate school building, 102 N. Main St., occupied space south of the site for the new library and will make way for a rain garden planned for outside the entrance to the new facility.
Workers have been preparing the site, at the corner of Main Street and Robinson Court, for the start of construction on the $12 million library, which is expected to open by early 2013, Library Director Lynn Frank said.
The library exterior could be completed by December, Frank said.
The razed building housed Homann Karate Do for nearly a decade and was sold to the city in an arrangement that paved the way for the design of the new library.
The city paid $450,000 for the building, using money from a $2 million September bond sale, of which $500,000 was for improvements to the future library site.
Karate school owner Brett Homann parlayed the proceeds of the sale into a new building to become the first commercial occupant of the city-owned sports complex on North Street.
The new 6,000-square-foot Homann Karate Do opened earlier this month.
The new 46,000-square-foot library will occupy nearly the whole north half of the 100 block of North Main Street.
Patrons will enter and exit from the south near the middle of the block. The door will open out onto the rain garden, intended as a quiet area in the heart of the busy downtown.
Lack of space in the existing library, 214 S. Court St., led to the decision for a new library.
The cost of the new library will be borne by taxpayers in the library district.
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