The Dallas Morning News
By Eric Zarate
1:15 PM on Dec 13, 2022 CST

Fort Worth city council, in its Dec. 13 final meeting of 2022, is scheduled to vote on an $18 million offer for the downtown Central Library building.

The building, which opened on its current site in 1978 and is not a historic structure, was put up for sale in February. The current site features a second floor that remains unfinished, but was once attracted the interest of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.“When the Star-Telegram was looking to move to smaller quarters about 2010, after selling our presses and contracting with the Dallas Morning News to print our paper, we considered the library as a potential location but it ultimately didn’t fit our needs,” said Jim Witt, executive editor from 1996 to 2016.

City officials report that since the Central Library’s post-pandemic reopening only the street-level floor is accessible to the public and visits to the location have decreased 45%. The Central Library will remain open until summer 2023.

Genealogy, local history and archives were moved Oct. 22 from the Central Library to the new Fort Worth History Center. Fort Worth has had a downtown library since 1901 and the current building is the third site.

Any final location of a future library depends on assessing downtown population needs, residential trends, property availability and a 2019 library master plan.

No employees will be laid off or terminated due to relocation of the library, city officials said in a prepared statement.