Old library to get new focus as community hub

A grade II-listed building which was home to a 133-year-old library is to get a new lease of life as a community hub.

The red brick Victorian building near Birmingham city centre, that once housed Spring Hill Library, closed in December 2022 after Birmingham City Council cited issues with the building's heating system.

The Midlands Turkish Society have now taken over the building after it struck a deal with the local authority to take on a 125-year restricted community-use lease.

The society's chairman, Dr Goktug said it planned to turn the building into a "community hub", including a library service that would continue to operate on a "smaller scale".

The chairman said the building was a "jewel in the crown of Birmingham" and the society was "really excited" to take it on.

He emphasised that it would be "open to everyone" and said: "Our ethos is building bridges and connecting cultures".

The society is a community interest company (CIC), a limited company set up to benefit the community it serves, which already works across the West Midlands to support Turkish and Turkish Cypriot diaspora.

It hosts regular Turkish language classes, a choir, folk dancing lessons and sports clubs.

Tenekeci said the focus of the hub would be to provide activities that support community cohesion, educational attainment and culture.

He said one of the reasons why the society wanted to take the building on was due to it being in an area where there was "significant indices of multiple deprivation" and it had been keen to step in after the local authority had made cuts to the city's library services.

Birmingham City Council set out plans last year to save £2.285m annually from this year by reducing overall library opening times by a third and outsourcing the running of seven sites.

Tenekeci, who is an engineer, admitted the condition of the Victorian building in Ladywood needed to be addressed before it could reopen.

Shuranjeet Singh, Labour councillor for Soho and Jewellery Quarter, agreed and said the library was an "important asset in the heart of the local community", but the building had "operational and structural issues".

Singh added that the work to repair the building's broken heating system and "significant cracks to the structure" required "significant financial investment".

Tenekeci told the BBC fundraising efforts towards the repairs had already been launched and the society had raised £15,000 so far with three more events planned.

Becky Danks, from the Birmingham Loves Libraries campaign group, said it was "fantastic news" that the building would be kept open to the public and an "added bonus" there would still be some sort of library provision.

The group's campaign had evolved since the library's closure and supported the building being open for community use rather than for its initial purpose, she added.

"Libraries represent communities, they provide a safe space and it sounds like the new organisation are really keen to continue the principal of that", Danks said.

The campaigner added that the building had been thriving before its closure and footfall had risen by 40% after the Covid pandemic with more than 4,700 members.

"Local people deserve access to such a beautiful and inspiring building", Danks said.

Emma Lochrey, another campaigner from Birmingham Loves Libraries, said the community had done "a huge amount of work" to ensure the building would not be permanently closed and she was optimistic about its future.

"This is a chance for us to think about how to rebuild library services in the city and look at what they offer", Lochrey said.

She added that she was hopeful the partnership between the society and Birmingham Library Services would mean that library staff would be employed at the site, as they are "at the heart of what the services provide to the community".

In a report, Birmingham City Council said the aspirations were for the library service to include a " technology-enabled borrowing and returning system", to "reduce the need for extensive onsite staffing".

The report added: "The proposed tenant [the CIC] had provided evidence that it would have sufficient funds to cover the lease rent, repairs, and the council's legal costs".

Tenekeci said it was important that the building was "financially sustainable" and the society also planned to the hire the space out to generate income that would be put back into the hub.

He added that the society hoped to reopen the grade II-listed building by the end of the year.

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