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“All of the dollars and politics and how long it took and all that aside, this is about the people who need a place,” he said.

The Mission started in 1972 down the street from the Central library branch at Central United Church, with an average of 28 men served coffee and doughnuts in the basement. Today, it operates 24 hours a day, providing three meals and a myriad of services, including addiction and recovery programs, overnight shelter, a fitness centre, job retraining, a food bank and a hair salon. It rescues and redistributes $5.5 million worth of fresh produce every year, thanks to an outpouring of community support in the form of donations and volunteerism.

“In our opinion we are truly a modern-day example of the miracle of the five loaves and two fish,” Dunn said, explaining that the expansive space in the library provides the mission with a “blank canvas” to create a new headquarters.

But as a library, it’s oversized and out-of-date and doesn’t meet the needs of today, let alone the needs of tomorrow, according to Dilkens. “Three storeys and 107,000 square feet may have been needed when we had row upon row of books, but today that’s just not the case.”

Library CEO Kitty Pope said public libraries are still about books, “but they’re now so much more.”

In recent years, the inventory of books has been pared down from 190,000 to 175,000 at the Central branch, as its role has evolved.

“People need more space to congregate, to work together, to collaborate,” she said when about her vision for the new library. “They want new technologies, they want learning opportunities, they want innovative technologies that they can experience first and move out into the community with.”

Since opening, the Central branch has seen more than 12 million people visit, to borrow books, CDs and even 8-tracks. They’ve attended thousands of programs, spent more than a million hours on public computers and asked more than 500,000 questions, said Pope.

“This relocation opportunity will allow us to become more accessible to Windsorites and expand our services to the entire community.”

bcross@postmedia.com