Quote:
Originally Posted by New Era
But lets play devil's advocate here. Exactly how many of these structures does the city need? There are 18 public libraries in Calgary. According to statistics 393,000 Calgarians hold library cards. The average library in Canada will see just under 98,000 visitors a year. So you have dedicated 18 buildings, with 2,195,000 items in the collection, to service a select group of patrons from the community.
For comparison sake, in the same period the Saddledome attracted just over 1,118,000 fans for Flames and Hitmen games. I can't speak for other events, as those numbers weren't posted, but that's an awful lot of bodies that go through one building. |
The devil is a little off in his advocacy. There were 6.7 million visits to Calgary libraries in 2016 and the number is going up every year.
Quote:
Originally Posted by New Era
So do you spend $250M on another library which sees limited use, of which there are 17 others, or throw that into a building badly in need of replacement, one which sees many more visitors and generates more revenues for the City?
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It sees far fewer visitors, and employs fewer people. And no doubt those millions of visits generate 10s of millions in ancillary benefits to businesses nearby (or even in) the library.
Quote:
Originally Posted by New Era
I don't know, wouldn't it be more worthwhile to build another library where a select few people can loiter or borrow DVDs and CDs to take home and pirate for free?
I think we can all agree there has to be middle ground in this discussion,
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Ha. Middle ground indeed.