The $21.4 million complex was a joint project between the Dunedin City Council and Positive Property, and this week the council confirmed the project had recently received land use consent, after the building and resource consents were granted late last year.
The proposed two-storey building will be used as a combined library and community complex, including rooms for meetings, IT learning spaces and a recording studio.
The consent documents said the building should be completed by the end of this year.
Post-development, the majority of the site was expected to be covered in hard surfacing, the building footprint will be 1126sq m over a collective site area of 1504sq m (about 75% of the site).
The library will occupy the majority of the ground floor.
The consent documents said within the library and visible from King Edward St would be an area called the “makers space”.
This area would be used by community outreach programmes "such as quilting/sewing groups, arts and crafts classes, building small projects, and other creative endeavours", the documents said.
The remaining internal spaces would include four meeting rooms; two internal to the library and two outside of the library, accessed from the building’s principal entrance foyer.
These two meeting rooms would be available to the public in and outside of standard library operating hours.
The application said the rest of the site would be developed with a plaza area at the rear of the building to be used for library functions and outdoor gatherings.
The rear of the building will also provide a secondary entrance.
The Dunedin City Council announced in August last year it had agreed to buy a building to be constructed at 38-156 King Edward St, which would be the home for the new library complex.
This was the site of the old Wolfenden and Russell building.
Positive Property bought the site after a fire there in 2020.
The council had originally planned to build the new library and community complex on a site it bought at 278 King Edward St.
