‘Everyone is welcome’: Public library opens community play area

By Mo Cranker on February 1, 2020.

It was a big day Saturday for the Medicine Hat Public Library.

The organization announced last June that it would be opening a free community play area early in 2020 and it kept true to its promise.

“We’re beyond excited,” said chief librarian Ken Feser. “It looks good and we’ve got a good turnout today for the ribbon cutting.

“We’re just so happy that this is opening.”

The library held a free barbecue with the help of South Country Co-op this past summer to announce the project. Co-op donated more than $74,000 to the play space project to make it happen.

“We’re so thankful that Co-op stepped in and helped make this happen,” said Feser. “This is something that so many kids are going to enjoy in our community.”

Co-op’s board president Richard Potter says this was an important project for the group to support.

“It’s great to see the space open up,” he said. “Kids are our future members and we like to encourage our youth to be engaged.

“It’s important for us to support our communities.”

The space can hold 25 kids playing at any given time and can hold 50 people total. It runs during normal library hours. Feser says noise shouldn’t be an issue.

“We thought about noise a lot during this whole process,” he said. “In a modern library, you don’t always need complete silence, but there are times when it’s necessary.

“We will close the play space for things like story times where the quiet is needed.”

Feser says it has been nice to see the project come together on time.

“Any time you’re doing something like this, delays can happen,” he said. “We really didn’t have any major issues with this and everything rolled out like we hoped it would.

“We got a lot of support from the city with things like construction, which is an area we would have struggled with.

Feser added that library staff are excited to see kids playing in the space.

“Even just today during our speeches, the kids were clearly ready to get in there and start playing,” he said. “Playing is important for learning and we think this is just a really important facility for our city.”

On top of the kids’ area, the library added a tween space as well. Feser says there could also be more on the horizon.

“We’re not going to get into that quite yet,” he said. “People can follow for updates for when the time comes.”

Anyone in the city is able to access the play area, it does not require a library card or any membership.

“We want people to know that this is for everyone,” said Feser. “We welcome anyone in here and we really hope to see families and kids we’ve never seen before.”

People are encouraged to check the library’s website or to call in to see if the area is open.

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