Wichita’s Westlink Library Branch reopens Monday. Get a look at the $7.4M remodel
It was a busy day at the Westlink Branch Library March 13 as staff was putting the finishing touches on the newly renovated space just ahead of its planned opening.
For those who are familiar with the old space, walking into the new one may be shocking. Instead of neutral brown and mustard yellow colors, the space now has a palette of greens, blues, pinks and oranges — just to name a few.
It’s also almost double the size, according to Wichita Director of Libraries Jaime Nix. Pre-renovation, the building was 10,300 square feet, but has now grown to 18,349 square feet.
“It feels like Westlink Branch Library still, despite its modern amenities,” Nix said.
The branch first opened in 1964, and the current building, which sits at 8515 Bekemeyer St., opened its doors in 1981. But in 2023, the Wichita City Council moved forward with a modernization and renovation, making Key Construction the project’s general manager in November of that year, and demolition officially began in January 2024.
Nix said the total renovation cost was $7,465,000. Of that $6,965,000 was city funds, and $500,000 was capital fundraising.
For the past year, the library had a temporary location opened May 2024. It closed this March, but Westlink patrons don’t have to wait much longer to utilize the new space. The renovated branch is scheduled to open to the public Monday, March 24, and a grand opening celebration will be held Saturday, May 10.
A community project
The first step to redesigning the library was to get community feedback on what patrons wanted to see.
“We did a number of focus groups at the early stages of the project,” Nix said. “We wanted to talk to, really representation across demographics and our partners to understand what was most important.”
New additions to the branch include a sensory room, four study rooms, two mid-size collaboration rooms, a classroom and a large conference room. A main priority was to create a space for all the age groups.
“We kind of sifted through all of the community information and then identified ... what are the experiences that are going to keep people here and keep people coming back?” Nix said.
The children’s and teen spaces have seen major upgrades. The children’s space now includes opportunities for interactive play, including a wall that will be used to project photos on.
“We’ll create like a jungle, like scene or the Sahara desert, and we’ll take kids to a different geography, time, space, and let them actually create the magic and the movement,” Nix said.
An outdoor space just outside of the children’s reading space will have outdoor play equipment.
The teen space, different than most libraries, is set up in the middle of the building, designed to be surrounded by trees in a circular space.
“The teens that we talked to, interestingly, they wanted their space to be kind of in the middle of everything so they could help with their younger siblings or help with grandma and grandpa,” Nix said.
As you walk in the front door of the library, you will see a large mural on the right Nix said is supposed to embody the state of Kansas — complete with bison and sunflowers.
An important thing to the library staff when finishing the mural was accuracy.
“When we were looking at the designs for the bison, there’s a little bison ... and they had full grown horns, and our staff was like, ‘I don’t think they get horns until they’re bigger,’” Nix said.
While the building seems completely different to the naked eye, it’s not. The original building’s brick was coordinated in some of the new designs. In fact, the architects of the new building are the son and grandson of the person who designed the original structure.
“We paired them with a design firm who’s done a lot of work throughout the nation with public libraries to really thoughtfully design for the future,” Nix said.
The Westlink Branch Library’s collection includes just under 40,000 volumes, Nix said.
Three other library branches have either recently been renovated or are under construction — the Maya Angelou Northeast Branch Library reopened March 17, the Ford Rockwell Branch Library recently closed for construction and the Alford Branch Library is under construction.
This story was originally published March 19, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
