The Saint John Tool Library needs help finding their new home.
Founder Brent Harris says the rent at their current Union Street location has gotten too high, and as a non-profit, they can’t sustain it anymore.
Harris says they don’t have a lease at their current location, which is worrisome.
“Our new owners of the building just haven’t been working with us very well, so we’ve had to kind of take some hits, and with this rent increase we said ‘okay, it’s time for us to find a space, a space that we can own,” he said.
Harris says they have a few requirements for the new space: at least 2000 square feet, for under $1,600 a month.
“There’s no reason why we have to stay in the uptown core. We just don’t want to go to any of the extremes of the city. We don’t want to go way east or way west, or way north or anything like that. So that’s one requirement that we kind of stay closer to the core,” he said.
Harris says they’re hoping to spread the word around the community that they’re looking to move.
“We just think that out there somewhere, somebody’s got a space and they’ve been looking at it for a long time and saying this is exactly the kind of community project I want my space to be involved with. We’ve looked at a few spaces, but nothing has caught our attention yet to where we’re saying, oh that’s the one, let’s move,” he said.
Harris says if they find the right space, he’d love to expand the Tool Library, and offer more products and workshops, which is why they’re looking for something that’s 2000 square feet or bigger.
“I mean, we can work with a little less, we have a little less than 2000 (square feet) right now, but that’s a goal of ours so that we can expand into a few other items, potentially camping gear, potentially more tolls in the tool library, maybe a little bit bigger wood working shop,” he said.
Harris says tool libraries are a great community asset, and also help reduce environmental impacts and carbon emissions.
“Every tool that we lend out is one tool that you don’t have to buy, which is one tool that doesn’t require extraction, which is one tool that doens’t require shipping, on and on, so there’s some real measurable impacts there,” he said.
“It’s like a public library. Nobody really questions the effectiveness of them as a community asset, and for us, as a tool library, it’s no different.”
The Saint John Tool Library also runs the Community Build program and have spearheaded a number of revitalization projects in the city
“For our neighbourhoods that are quite run down and in need of revitalization, this is one way where you can really spread the impact and those goals of revitalization across a big swath of our community,” he said.
Harris says they are hoping to find a new place by March or April, and May at the very latest.
