AUBURN – Construction crews are about a month away from knocking down the city’s old municipal offices to make room for a bigger library.

The Auburn Public Library officially took over the former city building Monday, according to Library Director Rosemary Waltos. There’s no set schedule for construction work yet, but Waltos said she expects to see the building at the corner of Spring and School streets razed by mid-November.

“We’ve started some interior work at the old library, and they’ve been getting ready to do the same thing at the city building,” Waltos said. “We expect it to go pretty fast. We have to go through and remove old asbestos, and then we can take it down.”

Almost everything had been removed from the old city building by Saturday morning, according to Community Relations Coordinator Laurie Smith. City crews cleaned out all of the furniture for use in fire stations and other city buildings. Crews even took many of the building’s old ceiling tiles. They’ll be used to replace broken tiles in the Great Falls Performing Arts Center.

Smith said the city is considering using old bathroom and plumbing fixtures from the city building to replace parts at the performing arts center.

“It’s not that they’re anything special,” she said. “They’re just newer and better than the ones in parts of Great Falls. Those are so old, it’s hard to find parts for them any more.”

That will have to wait until crews have finished cleaning up the asbestos in the old building.

“They need the water on to do the cleanup, and we can’t take the fixtures until they turn off the water,” Smith said.

According to plans, the library building will expand to include the area now occupied by the city building. Municipal offices moved to Auburn Hall earlier this month, making room for the library expansion.

The $7 million expansion should take between 14 and 18 months to complete, Waltos said. That puts the opening of the new library in spring 2006, she said.

“We expect them to get started putting down foundations right away and then work right through the winter,” Waltos said.