The Vancouver Public Library has worked to open a rooftop garden for 23 years. Where is it?

If you look straight up from the atrium of the Vancouver Public Library’s (VPL) downtown branch, you’ll see trees.

Long ago they were merely saplings, but they’ve grown in the 23 years since the library opened.

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And not once have they given members of the public respite from the sun overhead.

A garden was built atop the library with the aim of turning it into a public park, but it’s never opened.

It’s a project that ran out of money, leaving the top two floors of the building to be leased to the province.

That lease ran out five years ago.

Now, the garden is on track to open in September as part of an approximately $16-million project that will see the building’s top two floors renovated.

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But a public park isn’t the project’s sole feature.

“Along with the rooftop garden, there are two outdoor terraces on the eighth floor,” said Christina de Castell, the VPL’s chief librarian.

“There’s a 77-seat theatre where we’ll be able to show community film festivals and have author readings.”

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There will also be a quiet reading room.

Both the garden and the reading room are the two biggest questions that library staff face, de Castell said.

Now, finally — after an opening initially set for March — the library might have an answer.

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The project itself looks all but finished, and people present at the library on Tuesday seemed plenty enthusiastic about its eventual opening.

One library user said they were likely to use the rooftop garden, “especially on a sunny day.”