thedailyfeed:

Now this is some clever recycling. A once-abandoned Wal-Mart was turned into an enormous, beautiful library by McAllen, Texas. 

The city coughed up $5 million for the 15-acre property in 2006, when Walmart announced it would shutter the store in favor of a new “Supercenter” nearby.

Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle, a Minneapolis architecture firm, was hired to renovate the structure, turning the 124,500-square-foot space into the country’s largest — and most chic — single-story library. 

Wow. Smart work with wasted space. Way to go, Texas! Hopefully, this will be a model for things to come.