The Madison Public Library System will open The Imagination Center at Reindahl Park in September —the library's 10th location and first new branch since 1999 — to expand access to over 19,000 people.
The Imagination Center will be the city’s first library located within a park, designed to merge nature and literary spaces into a community hub and learning center. Madison mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway allocated $320,000 in the City of Madison’s 2026 Executive Operating Budget to staff the facility.
District 17 Alder Sabrina Madison, a longtime advocate for the project, celebrated the announcement .
“I spent a lot of time trying to make sure that my district knew that I was here to represent them,” Madison told The Daily Cardinal. “Because the number one thing that I heard when I became alder is that: ‘We don't have anything. The city doesn't see us. The city doesn't invest in us.’”
Governmental support for the project sent a positive message to the northeast community.
“When you see folks like the mayor, the library staff, even the Madison Public Library Foundation folks, when you see other alders backing it — that signals to this community that we see you, that we support you, that we are invested in you,” Madison said.
The Imagination Center is expected to be completed in September. Once finished, the center will sit in an area that Madison Public Library Director Tana Elias identified as a "resource desert.”
“It's an area with a high percentage of English language learners. It's an area where nine percent of people don't have access to the internet at work or home,” Elias told the Cardinal. “There aren't facilities where you can go and have a community meeting. There aren't places where you can go and get internet access.”
Elias said those gaps in access are exactly what the Imagination Center aims to address. The facility will provide amenities like public restrooms, free internet and computer access, rentable meeting spaces and a large literature selection, similar to other Madison Public Library locations.
“If you need to write a resume, you can do that at the library. If you want to research your medical condition, you can do that at the library. If you just want to meet your neighbors, you can do that at the library,” Elias said. “It's one of the last few free places that people of all ages and economic backgrounds and ethnic backgrounds can meet and be on equal playing ground.”
Elias said the mayor's commitment to funding the project will ensure existing library locations don’t have to cut their budgets.
“The fact the mayor supported it — and supported it without reductions to existing library service — means that those alders aren't having to make a decision between reductions to my library and building a new library for people who need it,” Elias said.
Additional funding for the Imagination Center will come from the Madison Public Library Foundation, which has raised $3.8 million of their $4.5 million goal, according to their website.
“Many city agencies have been working together for about a decade to make the Imagination Center a reality,” Rhodes-Conway said in a press release. “It’s time for this library to open and to be fully staffed and to have the operating funds that it needs.”
