Camas Public Library Is Getting Its Biggest Renovation in 20 Years. It Never Once Closed the Doors.

Walk into the Camas Public Library this summer and you'd have found the same front desk, the same tall windows, the same fireplace room everyone in town seems to love. You'd also have found orange construction fencing where the children's section used to be, staff wheeling carts of relocated books down hallways that don't usually see cart traffic, and a sign asking you to check out more than you normally would. The library never announced a closure. It just quietly rearranged itself around a $2.1 million renovation, the first the building has seen in more than two decades.

That's the part worth sitting with. Camas didn't pause library service to rebuild it. The city chose to fund the harder, messier, more expensive half of the project first, using mostly its own dollars, and save the easier, already-grant-funded half for later. That's backward from how most municipal renovations get sequenced, where towns typically move on the piece that already has outside money attached before touching the part that has to be paid for out of pocket. Camas did the opposite, and if you've had a library card here for a while, that choice is about to show up in the building you walk into this fall.

What "Never Closed" Actually Meant All Summer

Library director Connie Urquhart was direct about the plan before construction started in late June: the summer reading program wouldn't be touched, and the library wouldn't shut its doors. To make that work while thousands of books were being shuffled to temporary shelving throughout the building, the library leaned on its patrons. Every library card was suddenly good for up to 150 items at a time, checkouts made between June and September got pushed to an October 1 return date, and books already checked out kept auto-renewing up to sixteen times as long as nobody else had a hold on them. The goal was to physically empty enough shelf space for construction crews to work without pulling materials off the floor entirely.

Storytimes moved outside to parks around Camas. A weekly pop-up library set up at Crown Park so families who weren't ready to navigate a construction zone still had a place to find books. Programs that normally ran in the Totem Pole Room got relocated as needed. None of it closed the library. All of it changed, at least temporarily, what going to the library actually looked like.

If you haven't set foot inside since spring, this is the gap between what you remember and what's actually been happening. The building stayed open. The building did not stay the same.

Inside the Learning Hive

The interior work centers on what the city is calling the Learning Hive, a full redesign of the children's area built around three connected spaces. The Early Learning Center handles kids from birth through age five, with the kind of hands-on, tactile setup meant to build early literacy skills before a child ever reads independently. Next to it, the Discovery Hallway is built for movement, the kind of space where a wall installation reacts when a kid spins it and a climbing structure invites the sort of exploring that doesn't happen quietly at a table. The Studio rounds it out as a project-based space aimed at students in third through sixth grade, old enough for homework help and small STEM projects but still years from the teen section.

The design work came from Johnston Architects, working alongside Lango Hansen Landscape Architects on the outdoor half of the project. Their goal, by the library's own description, was to modernize the space without losing the feel of an older, well-loved building, a balance Urquhart pointed to directly when she talked about residents who compliment the building's character multiple times a week and the library's wish to preserve that while still bringing the children's area current.

Camas city councilor and library board trustee Marilyn Boerke put the stakes in more personal terms. She's read with her own kids in that section of the library, and she wasn't shy about why the update mattered to her:

"I am excited about it because that section will match the magnificence of the fireplace room and welcome even more residents into that warm hug."

Boerke also made the literacy case plainly, arguing that early reading struggles tend to follow kids into math and beyond, which is part of why the city treated this piece of the project as worth doing first rather than waiting.

The Money Behind the Order of Operations

Here's where the renovation gets more interesting than a fresh coat of paint. The total project is split into two phases with two very different funding pictures.

• Phase 1, the interior Learning Hive work plus new flooring in the adult nonfiction room and updated lighting, was budgeted at roughly $1.32 million, paid for mostly through city dollars, a $100,000 grant from the Friends and Foundation of the Camas Library, and other local donations.
• Phase 2, the courtyard renovation, comes in at about $781,000 and is largely covered by a $710,000 Washington State Department of Commerce grant secured for exterior work.

In other words, the piece of this project that already had state money lined up and waiting is the piece Camas chose to do second. The city moved first on the interior renovation, the one it had to fund mostly itself, rather than starting with the courtyard project where most of the money was already secured. That's not how these things typically get staged. Cities usually chase the grant-funded work first to lock in outside dollars before they can lapse or shift. Camas put its own money on the table for the kids' section instead and let the courtyard, fully funded through Commerce, wait its turn.

Whatever the internal reasoning at city hall, the outcome for residents is a clear signal about priority. The city decided the children's area couldn't wait for a courtyard project that already had its funding secured elsewhere.

The Courtyard Comes Next

Phase 2 turns what the city describes as an underused, fenced-off patch behind the library into a small outdoor gathering space, with a bench layout arranged in the shape of a flower designed to work for both solo reading and group conversation. It's meant to function as a small public room as much as a garden, a spot for the kind of casual, unplanned encounters that don't happen inside a quiet reading room. Construction on that half of the project follows the interior work, so if Phase 1 wraps on its early-fall timeline, the courtyard becomes the next visible change to watch for as the year moves on.

What This Means If You Have a Card This Fall

If the project has held to its early-fall target, the Learning Hive is opening or has just opened right around now. A few practical things worth knowing before your next visit: some materials that shifted locations during construction may still be settling back into place, the Second Story Gallery's rotating art shows and First Friday receptions have continued through the renovation and are worth checking if you haven't been by in a while, and if you're still holding onto a stack of books from the Borrow Big push this summer, keep an eye on that October 1 return window rather than assuming the old due date still applies.

This is also just a good excuse to walk through downtown Camas again if you haven't lately. The library sits close enough to the same stretch of Fourth Avenue that's been reshuffling all summer around the farmers market's move to Birch Street, so a library stop and a downtown coffee run still pair easily on the same afternoon.

None of this is really about a building. It's about what a city chooses to spend on first when it can't do everything at once, and in this case, Camas picked the room where its youngest residents learn to read.

If you're the kind of person who pays attention to what your city invests in and why, that instinct tends to carry over into how you think about your own home and your own street. If you're weighing a move in Camas, or just curious what your place might be worth in today's market, DPC Homes is happy to talk through it. Debbie offers a free home valuation and staging consultation whenever you're ready, no pressure, just a conversation about what's next.