Historic Carnegie Library in downtown Lawrence is a lot more structurally sound now than it was a year ago — but its future use is up in the air.

Construction workers spent much of 2003 renovating the building, at a cost of $400,000 to the city.

That money bought a “new roof, wall stabilization, elimination of some drainage problems, guttering, window replacement, those kinds of things,” City Manager Mike Wildgen said recently.

Now that city officials have ensured the building will remain standing, they must decide who the next tenant will be.

Lawrence city commissioners “want to see a use that’s compatible with the original intent of the building as a learning experience for young and old,” Wildgen said. “They definitely want to keep it in city hands, public hands, they don’t want to sell it.”

Three organizations are vying for the building: The Langston Hughes Center for Community Enrichment, which wants to use the building at to promote “diverse literacies,” Lawrence Arts Commons, which would use the building as a studio residence for four artists to receive professional mentoring, and Americana Music.

Commissioners have urged the Langston Hughes Center and Lawrence Arts Center to try and share the building, but Langston Hughes leaders said in March they don’t think such an arrangement is possible.

“We hoped to collaborate with the people who are proposing an arts commons,” said Elizabeth Schultz, who represents the Langston Hughes group. “But there is after all limited space under the roof of the Carnegie building.”

But Diana Dunkley, an artist helping promote the commons, said more negotiation is possible.

The Carnegie Library, 945 N.H., received 00,000 in renovation in 2003. Now that the structure is stabilized, city officials continue to look for a new tenant for the building.

“We don’t know what the City Commission would like to do,” Dunkley said. “But we thought they clearly said they’d like to see two programs under one roof, and we feel that’s a doable thing.”

The building has been mostly empty since spring 2002, when the Lawrence Arts Center vacated it for new digs at 945 N.H. Before that, the Carnegie building served as the city’s library from 1904 to 1972, reputedly the location where writer Langston Hughes read some of his first books. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The library was built in 1904 with money provided by the Carnegie Corp. Steel baron Andrew Carnegie endowed 1,681 library buildings throughout the world; more than 50 are in Kansas.

The gift came, however, with conditions. The city had to pledge to fund the upkeep of the library and keep it stocked with books to guarantee its place as a center of learning in the city.