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Help Design the New East County Library!

Multnomah County Library is building a new, destination library in East County as part of the ballot measure which voters passed in November 2020. This East County Library will be an entirely new building similar in size to the Central Library in downtown Portland. By building an almost 95,000-square-foot new library on a new site, the library can dream big with the community and provide exciting services in a diverse location. As part of the building design process, the building project team wants your feedback to understand how this space can best serve you.

The building project team collects community input to help design the East County Library. The building project team includes Library employees, County employees, consultants, contractors and subcontractors, including three core firms hired for this project: Holst Architecture, Adjaye Associates and MultiCultural Collaborative. You can learn more about the team at Multnomah County Library website.

Based on input from community members, new features may include:

  • A 220 seat auditorium for cultural celebrations, lectures, performances, and family programs.
  • Impactful services to meet diverse community needs and interests, from early learning and play spaces for families to teen spaces, career services and beyond.
  • A public outdoor space.

On July 8, 2022, Multnomah County Library and TriMet announced an initial agreement to begin a due diligence period of 120 days to negotiate the library’s prospective purchase of the Gresham City Hall Park and Ride as the site for the East County library. On October 24, 2022, the parties extended the due diligence period by 60 days with a goal of finalizing the agreement and purchase by early 2023.

If this purchase moves forward, the new East County Library would be a 10-minute drive or a 20-minute bus ride from the Wood Village City Hall & Civic Center.

Centering the Community

Community input is especially important for East County Library as it is an entirely new building. MultiCultural Collaborative (MCC) helped guide the first phase of community engagement. They led the focus groups for the 2016 Framework for Future Library Spaces. This framework has closely informed these building projects.

Community Library Champions from three community organizations will work with residents in East County and beyond to gather their dreams for this new library. These organizations include:

  • Black Community of Portland
  • El Programa Hispano Católico
  • Immigrant and Refugee Coalition of Oregon (IRCO)

East County Library community engagement will continue with a series of public community events, focus groups, teen outreach, surveys and more. Check the Multnomah County Library website for updates.

Take Survey

The survey is available online in multiple languages: Vietnamese Survey, Chinese Survey, Spanish Survey, Russian Survey, and English Survey. Survey closes February 5, 2023.