Detailed plans for a new £3 million library and learning resource centre in the middle of Hereford have been released.

The part-conversion of the Maylord Orchards shopping centre will incorporate six of the current shop units on the ground and first floors, two of which are currently empty.

Radical changes will also be made to the building’s main “atrium” or hallway, and there new facades and doors for the Trinity Square and Blueschool Street entrances, and a re-landscaped Trinity Square.

Designed by local architecture firm Architype, the new published plans are essentially for the council to approve its own proposals. Government funding for the scheme within a wider £22 million package of improvements to the city was confirmed last week.

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According to a statement with the plans, the design for the library is intended to create a flexible floor layout, with central “cores” on each floor which can expand into the atrium for informal seating and study.

The total area of the new library will be slightly larger that the one it replaces on Broad Street, and will be managed by the same team, the design statement says. It will include a children’s library and a “youth library with study space”.

The planned learning resource centre, on the first floor to the right of the Trinity Square entrance, will have a “large” meeting space which can be subdivided, with smaller meeting rooms and additional space in a “semi-private area”. These can potentially be rented out.

The centre will help local people access training and support to re-skill, the design statement explains.

Changes to the main atrium are intended to “make it a vibrant public space once more”. The prominent escalator will be removed and replaced with a staircase, “to provide better flow through the space”.

New indoor planting and seating will encourage visitors to linger and allow the library to spill out into it.

The Trinity Square entrance space to the front of Maylord Orchards will also host movable modular planters and seating, “to define a central community space that can be used for events and activities”.

Horizontal timber cladding will also be added to the Trinity Square frontage.

The remaining retailers in the centre, including Wilko and Poundland, “must remain unaffected” by the changes, the design statement adds.

Herefordshire Council took over the centre in June 2020 during the first wave of the Covid pandemic, in order to arrest its apparent decline.

The shopping centre was built in 1984, after the county council compulsorily purchased and demolished the previous buildings on the site.

“The project saw considerable destruction and removal of many historical buildings and the original Maylord Street,” the design statement explains, adding that a new public library was part of the original plans.

The current design aims to recreate and enhance the original vision for the centre as “a celebration of public space, openness and greenery”, it says.

Comments on the application, numbered 222783, can be made until November 3.