Nearly three months after lightning struck the cupola atop the Hopkinton Town Library and started a fire, the library is beginning to let residents back in.
The Community Room, a wing on the west side of the building, reopened this week and welcomed a group of youngsters on Tuesday for its first storytime program since Aug. 3, the day the library caught fire.
“It feels like enormous progress,” said library Director Donna Dunlop. “It’s a step back into normal for us. There is so much work ahead, but this shows some progress.”
After the fire, the library relocated to a small section of the nearby Slusser Senior Center, which shares a parking lot with the library. Many of the children’s items currently kept in the Slusser Center will move into the Community Room this week.
Various pieces of library furniture and about 1,200 boxes of books remain in a Servpro warehouse in Bow, where they are being cleaned. Dunlop said in September that about 95 percent of the collection was saved.
Damage in the Community Room was not as bad as the rest of the building. The section can be locked off from the main library and suffered minor smoke damage. The wing was reopened after being cleaned and the HVAC system, which was taken out by the lightning strike, was replaced.
Dunlop said the library is still “three to five months away” from reopening and being fully functional as it was before the Aug. 3 fire. The open area beneath the cupola sustained severe smoke and water damage.
The board of trustees received bids for the reconstruction project and has narrowed its choice down to two firms: Meridian Construction of Gilford and Bergeron Construction Company of Keene.
The board interviewed Bergeron on Monday and met with representatives from Meridian on Thursday. Dunlop said on Friday that the board made a recommendation to its insurer on which firm to employ. She declined to share the board’s recommendation publicly.
The library’s main area is totally empty right now. The carpets were taken out, leaving only the sticky tack board beneath. Dunlop the said the board is considering new designs for the library’s interior, but it is still early in that part of the process.
(Nick Stoico can be reached at 369-3321 or nstoico@cmonitor.com.)