The building at 1124 Del Paso Blvd. has worn a lot of hats since 1960 — grocery store, home goods shop, newsroom — and soon it will become the new North Sacramento-Hagginwood Library. Otto Construction is expected to hand the renovated, 19,100-square-foot building over to the Sacramento Public Library Authority and the City of Sacramento in the coming weeks, with the branch expected to open in early 2027.
According to the Sacramento Bee, the timeline isn't as simple as flipping on the lights once construction wraps. Library Director Peter Coyl told the paper that once the building is officially received, staff still need three to six months to receive and shelve books and outfit the equipment and technology needed to run a modern branch — a process that includes ordering roughly 20,000 books from scratch.
Before it was a library-in-waiting, the building spent decades as a neighborhood fixture. It opened in 1960 and later became Van's Market, run by John and Andy Van Horn, until it closed in the 1980s. Glory Food Mart, which occupied the space afterward, went bankrupt in 1993. Sandy Sheedy later recruited the Sacramento News & Review to the site, and the alt-weekly relocated its newsroom there in 2009 — where it stayed until the SN&R newsroom was shuttered by the COVID-19 pandemic, per the Bee's reporting.
From Newsroom to Bookshelves
The City of Sacramento bought the building from longtime SN&R publisher Jeff VonKaenel in 2021, with the sale carrying the understanding that the space would become a library. Funding issues delayed the start of renovations, and work wasn't visibly underway until December, according to the same Sacramento Bee account. Otto Construction spent much of the past year on the renovation, according to the Bee, reusing roughly half of the existing structure — including the building's original trusses — while removing mold and rot and completing a re-roofing.
Nicholas Foley, a project manager for Otto Construction, said the renovation took less than a year. Allison Otto, CEO of Otto Construction, said the company was excited to turn over the building, the Bee reported. The old SN&R sign, meanwhile, is being stored by the Center for Sacramento History, and the Sacramento Observer received SN&R's website after the newsroom closed.
What The New Branch Will Offer
Right now the future library includes a public area with empty shelves, waiting to be filled once the existing North Sacramento-Hagginwood Library — which currently operates out of a roughly 4,000-square-foot leased space on Del Paso Boulevard — eventually closes and transfers its collection over. The new building will include a maker space that could stay open after hours, a library of things stocked with tools, kitchenware and musical instruments, a dedicated teen space, a small room for the Friends of the Library, and a nonpublic area for staff. A mural remains on the side of the building, and city design plans required contractors to preserve the site's existing public art alongside a heritage oak tree on the property, as previously detailed by the Sacramento Bee.
The project is estimated to cost around $15 million. It follows on the heels of the Sacramento library system's $8 million renovation of the Martin Luther King Library in south Sacramento, which reopened in mid-August.
A Piece Of Del Paso's Bigger Comeback
Sacramento City Councilman Roger Dickinson has pushed city and library staff to open the new branch as soon as possible, saying the library is an important part of Del Paso Boulevard and North Sacramento's revitalization, according to the Bee. Dickinson also said the building looks good from the outside. Former Sacramento City Councilman Rob Kerth is among those who have tracked the project's progress over the years.
The library sits near several other neighborhood landmarks in flux, including a potential train station behind the Sacramento Employment and Training Agency, the ongoing reconstruction of Iceland, and a planned 2,000-person music venue in the former Limn warehouse. The library's arrival also dovetails with a broader financing push: a cash plan for the corridor that Sacramento's City Council advanced in April, creating an Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District covering District 2 and Del Paso Boulevard to capture future property tax growth for local improvements, as Hoodline previously reported.
Hoodline covered the project's construction kickoff last November. Now, with the building nearing handoff and a stocking timeline measured in months rather than years, North Sacramento residents have a firmer sense of when they might finally walk into their new branch.
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