Photo by Deb Gau Tyler city officials and staff held a groundbreaking ceremony Thursday for a planned standalone public library building. From left to right are Tyler City Council member Daniel Bloom, Mayor Joan Jagt, library director Shelly Finzen, city council member Cricket Raschke and city council member Josh Keifer.

TYLER — Things are moving quickly for a new public library building in the city of Tyler. In the space of a few days, city officials went from approving a construction bid, to holding a groundbreaking ceremony Thursday morning.

“Thank you for every second, every penny, every ounce of hard work that you contributed,” library director Shelly Finzen told community members gathered on North Tyler Street. “Let’s dig.”

The library’s goal is to move into the new building in December, Finzen said.

On Monday, the Tyler City Council approved a roughly $900,000 construction bid for the library project from TE Underground, of Tyler. The total construction budget included a base bid of $889,000 and an alternate of $10,000.

The planned new library will have about 2,300 square feet of space, and include meeting space and accessibility features. The Tyler library currently has less than 1,000 square feet of space inside the city office building.

The new library site is still in Tyler’s downtown, about half a block north of the city offices.

Finzen said the work to fundraise and build a standalone library for Tyler has been going on for about the past three years. The library received $500,000 in Minnesota Multi-Purpuse Community Facility Projects Grant funding for the project, and Finzen said community members have also made donations to the project.

“This new library is a dream come true for numerous people, not just to the library staff or the city council,” Finzen told the crowd at Thursday’s groundbreaking. “We strive to serve every person in the Tyler community in some way.”

Building a new library was not a solo effort, Finzen said. “It was made possible by the hard work of library staff, city staff, council members, community members and many, many supporters,” she said.

Tyler City Council member and library liaison Cricket Raschke said the new building would be bright, and have more space to be able to meet the community’s needs. Finzen said the new library is also planned to be set back from the street, so that there will be some green space in front of the building.

“It’s a great facility for this community,” said city council member Daniel Bloom.

“It’s a little overwhelming,” Finzen said of seeing the groundbreaking.

She said she hadn’t really had time for the reality of the construction to sink in.

“When I see them digging, that’s when it will really hit me,” she said.”