The new Franklin Park branch of the township library silently opened its doors on September 12, and the reviews were good.

The 5,500-square-foot building sits within walking distance to Franklin Park school, and holds about 17,000 books, as well as DVDs, magazines and newspapers.

“It’s very exciting,” said January Adams, the library’s executive director. “We waited a long time for this.”

The new branch has a separate community room for events, and also features a kids’ section.

Adams said the new space is a vast improvement over the 3,800 square feet unit formerly rented at the Franklin Towne Square strip center on Route 27.

She said that branch was more of a test pilot program.

“When we had the branch in the strip library, we wanted to see if people would use it, and they did,” she said.

“Also, because it was one big room, we often had problems when we had kids’ programs, because people might be there to read or study and they’d have difficulty with the commotion of the kids’ program,” Adams said.

“So we thought that it would be better to go someplace else where we could spread out and have things more separated,” she said.

Adams credited Nick Ciampa, the chairman of the library Board of Trustees, with finding the property on which to build the branch.

Ciampa said the Eden Street tract was not the first choice.

He said he first looked at a piece of property on Route 27, but the seller backed out of the deal.

Next was a tract at South Middlebush and Claremont roads, but they were warned off of the land because of how much remedial work would have to be done, and neighbors that might not want the project there.

Ciampa said he looked at several other pieces of property before settling on a deal for the Eden Street property, which it purchased from the Board of Education.

The branch is open 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; 1:30-8 p.m. Thursdays; 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays and is closed on Sundays.

Here are some scenes from the day: