Culver City’s Julian Dixon Library is now open after being closed to construction for almost a year. The renovations cost approximately 2.5 million dollars in total and the project just finished earlier this month. Luckily $210,000 was donated from Friends of the Culver City Library and was applied towards the overall cost.

RAW International, an architectural company based out of Los Angeles, was the firm who preformed the renovations. RAW is known to specialize in building sustainability and overall energy efficiency. They did a fantastic job with the 21,406 square foot space.

Here are some of the improvements made to the library:

• New furniture including new reading chairs, computer chairs, lounge chairs and meeting chairs
• Community meeting room equipped with a kitchenette
• New security system and data infrastructure cabling
• Landscaping improvements
• New computers and iPad catalogues at each aisle
• Free Wi-Fi
• Battery recycling site

Also, all lighting in the building was upgraded to LED lights. In addition to the LED, the lighting inside the structure is now running on automatic sensors, controlling daylight. RAW also put in high efficiency windows to decrease the leakage of air. Most impressively, the library installed solar panels.

I am not an expert on electricity, but more so an expert on Culver City Real Estate, particularly Culver City homes for sale. However, this is what I can tell you: These solar panels will provide approximately 200,000-kilowatt hours of usage per year, which will save us almost $30,000 per year!

Overall, the new library is pretty impressive and I look forward spending more time in it! Well done RAW International.