Simply put, it's got a whole lot more of everything.

Coquitlam's new City Centre library branch is slated to open to the public on Tuesday, Nov. 13 at its new location at 1169 Pinetree Way.

And with the new location comes a myriad of new features: an additional 24,000 square feet of space, 90 parking stalls and 20 more computer stations.

"It's looking great," said Rhian Piprell, director of the Coquitlam Public Library system. "We're looking forward to being right in the middle of Coquitlam. We think that we're going to be very popular where we are."

The library's old home, adjacent to City Hall, only featured about 11,000 square feet of space and suffered from a lack of parking.

"The amount of parking is a big one," Piprell said. "We've been struggling with parking at the old library for a long time, and we'll have 90 spaces that are our very own."

As part of expansion plans for the library, council allocated $15.6 million from last year's budget to retrofit the new location. Other additions include a raised fireplace lounge, three multipurpose rooms that can collapse into a singular conference room and a dedicated multilingual space. The latter will include world language books focusing on the Farsi, Korean and Chinese languages, and a dedicated corner for conversation circles has also been set up to assist English as a second language students.

"I think that the architects have done an amazing job," Piprell said. "They've made it light, they've made it warm, and we've had somebody actually describe it as cozy.

It's difficult to picture a building this big as being cozy, but in fact, it is."

Though the library opens its doors to the public on Tuesday, a grand opening event is set for Nov. 24 from 12: 30 to 4 p.m.

jkurucz@thenownews.com