Terrebonne Parish book lovers will have to wait another year before they can walk through the doors of the parish's brand new state-of-the-art library, but library officials say the much-anticipated project will be worth the wait.

"Won't that be a wonderful Christmas present for the parish," Library Director Mary Cosper LeBoeuf said of the new main library branch that is scheduled to open in December 2002.

The building will be located on Civic Center Boulevard, near La. 311 next to Southdown Cemetery and the Houma-Terrebonne Civic Center.

Construction began Sept. 11, when parish and library officials symbolically broke ground, the same day terrorists attacks in three American cities stunned the world.

The tragic events of that day have not proved unlucky for the project, however. LeBoeuf said construction is going according to schedule.

This week, she said, construction workers will be hard at work framing the foundation of the 70,000-square-foot, two-story building.

Library employees are not idle either. LeBoeuf and her co-workers have been planning the building's interior, including the type of furniture they will need and the spots where computer and phone lines will be located.

Library workers will have considerably more options in the Civic Center branch than they have in their current home.

The Roussell Street branch, the system's main branch since 1952, is only 8,500 square feet, and its parking lot has room for about a dozen cars.

The new $13 million branch will be more than eight times larger.

The new library is being paid for with taxpayer money. The parish sold bonds to finance construction and plans to use revenue from the one-fourth-cent sales tax passed in April 1999 to repay the debt.

Library officials said the sales tax generates a little more than $3 million dollars annually.

After the new library is completed, the Roussell Street branch will close, and use of that building will revert back to the parish government, LeBoeuf said.

Dee Dee Thurston is a staff writer at The Courier. She can be reached at (985) 850-1149 or by e-mail at news@houmatoday.com.
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