Beginning late this summer, those who use Whittier’s 61-year-old central library are going to have to find an alternative because it will be closed for a year or more while long-sought repairs are made.

City officials say they have some ideas to help, including relying on the Whittwood branch, moving some services to the Whittier Depot and use of a bookmobile-like truck.

“It’s going to be a great effect because so many people are in and out of the library on a daily basis,” Sue Settlage, vice president for the Whittier Library Foundation, predicted about the closure.

The 36,000-square-foot library library is expected to shutter in August or September and not reopen for 11 to 12 months, Paymaneh Maghsoudi, director of library services, said.

Whittier plans to spend $14.5 million to fix the library’s mechanical, electrical, plumbing and roofing issues. The need for repairs was so dire that then-Whittier City Manager Jeff Collier warned in December 2018 that “it may come to a point where we’d have to close the doors. If the building is not adequate or safe, we’d have to close the building.”

Now, library officials are making plans to ease the burden on library patrons, an estimated 800 to 1,100 who visit the central library daily.

One option is the 52-year-old Whittwood branch library, which was remodeled in 2012. which is expanding its hours by opening at 10 a.m. Mondays and Tuesdays instead of noon, remain open until 9 p.m. Wednesdays instead of 6 p.m., and open from 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays. The library currently isn’t open Sundays.

The Whittwood branch typically gets 600 to 800 people a day; some staff from the central library will relocate there during the closure to handle the expected influx, Maghsoudi said.

Currently, neither the central or Whittwood library is open on Sundays.

“Hopefully, people get excited about the Sunday hours, and the city gives us enough money to open then,” Settlage said.

The Whittier Depot will host the Veterans’ Resource Center, passport services, limited book selection, reference services, and six-station public computer lab from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday.

The library’s Pop-Up, which is similar to a bookmobile, will go to the Whittier Depot, schools and other locations, Maghsoudi said.

Two weeks ago, the council awarded a $1.2 million contract to CW Driver of Pasadena to handle construction management. Maghsoudi said she’s not sure when construction and other contracts will be awarded,.

The move to either build a new central library or repair this one dates back to the early 2000s, its first attempt at several aimed at getting voters’ help. First, the city failed to convince voters to pass a sales tax hike. Then the city twice tried to get a share of state bond money. Then officials returned to the voters in November 2017, who narrowly rejected a $22 million local bond proposal.

City officials then went back to the drawing board, downsized plans and came up with the $14.6 million proposal.

The library’s problems include: