Does Donald Trump want media attention on this particular issue? We'll see when asked.
The Donald, riding high in polls in his race to become president, is connected to the sale of New York City public libraries? It turns out there is a connection. As articles in the Huffington Post and Fair have pointed out, this is likely to get reported in The New York Observer only if the reporting of it helps Trump’s real estate business. Why? . .
Same thing that connects Trump to the sell-off of New York City Libraries in deals shortchanging the public, but significantly benefitting the wealthy and New York’s real estate industry. . .
What’s that connection? . .
. . . Donald Trump is Jared Kushner’s father-in-law. In October 2009, Trump’s daughter Ivanka and Kushner wed. Kushner is not only the owner of The Observer, he was also, like Trump, born into a wealthy New York City real estate family.
This June, Scott Sherman, who had previously written a series of articles for The Nation on the subject, published a book about the New York Public Library’s losing its way in the pursuit of real estate deals, including the Donnell Library sale debacle that led the way: “Patience and Fortitude- Power, Real Estate, and the Fight to Save a Public Library.” A significant revelation in that book?: That Kushner family was in on the sale of the beloved Donnell Library from the outset.
Sherman’s book also provides new information that makes ultra-clear that the NYPL sold the Donnell Library to net less than anyone previously thought was the case. The NYPL netted millions less than $33 million. And that was for the sale of a 97,000 square foot five-story library, much of it recently renovated with public money on what was documented to be the most valuable block in Mid-Manhattan. This was November 2007, at the height of the real estate boom.
Was Trump more involved than that? Ivanka and Jared were dating when the Donnell sale was announced. No one has ever indicated that Trump was, himself, directly involved in any of the connected real estate transactions like his son-in-law’s related purchase of 666 Fifth Avenue. Did Trump ever at least look at the numbers underlying the deal? In the spring of 2011 when, post-fiscal crisis, Kusnher’s 666 Fifth avenue deal was encountering cash flow difficulties the Wall Street Journal observed that “lenders don't expect other backers, including Mr. Trump, to come to Mr. Kushner's aid.” The Journal quoted Mr. Trump about Jared, “He is a very smart young man. . . I think it will come out well for him and everybody.”
Of course the real story here is how the public is losing out on the sale of New York City libraries benefitting just a wealthy few. . . a wealthy few who are part of a very small world at that.
Increasing income, political and wealth equality is one of the major themes of the current presidential race, something Trump might like to talk about again.
Yes, very small world: This is not the first time the issue of New York City library sell-offs has come up in the presidential race. Over on the Democratic side, candidate Hillary Clinton has located her national campaign headquarters in a building that, for real estate development purposes, is part of a major central destination library in Downtown Brooklyn now proposed to be sold and shrunk by the city, turned over to a developer for a fraction of its public value. The deal proposing to sell and shrink that library is closely modeled on the Donnell Library sale conceived at the same time with some of the same people in the background. . .
What library in Brooklyn is being sold? It’s the one on Cadman Plaza West at the corner of Tillary and Clinton. Yes, Tillary & Clinton.
CONTACT:
Carolyn E. McIntyre, Michael D. D. White
Michael White, 718-834-6184, mddwhite [at] aol.com
Carolyn McIntyre, 917-757-6542 cemac62 [at] aol.com
Follow us on Twitter: @defendinglibraries
For photos and videos of prior Citizens Defending Libraries rallies opposing the sale, shrinkage, underfunding of New York City libraries, and elimination of books and librarians in the year and a half since its founding, see:
PHOTO GALLERIES- PAST EVENTS
http://citizensdefendinglibraries.blogspot.com/2014/01/photo-galleries-past-events.html
See also our latest masterpiece video (3 minutes 50 seconds): Selling Our Libraries!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD88Puy3px8
# # #
Monday, August 24, 2015
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Testimony and Report on Hearing Before Eric Adams, About Proposed Sale/Shrinkage of Major Public Asset, A Brooklyn Library, First Ever Such Borough Preseident Hearing
This page will be updated.
Important: Borough President Eric Adams is still taking testimony, the sooner the better. See:
When Citizens Defending Libraries checked in advance we were told any initial presentations by the BPL and developer would be more restricted, not the 30 to 40 minutes that they got to "sales pitch" the project at the beginning of the evening before the rest of us started to get our chance to speak. We also asked about our ability to use PowerPoint or video aids (we were prepared), and we were told we couldn't, we'd just be able to use placards with pictures to make our points, but that the pro-project side also wouldn't get to do a PowerPoint Computer slide style presentation like they eventually did.
The remarkable thing is that virtually all of those who testified in favor of selling and shrinking the library were in one way or another salaried by the real estate industry, many having an actual interest in the transaction. We are unclear whether we could detect a single legitimate resident of the community who testified in favor of the project. Although the BPL tried bringing some duped people from Sunset Park to assert that their library would move to the head of the list for city funding if this central downtown library is sold, we had more residents from Sunset Park who spoke against this form of so-called "charity" buy-off.
And in the end, even with all those salaried individuals testifying (BPL trustee Hank Gutman works for the law firm representing Blackstone, the world's largest real estate investment firm++, headed by Stephen Schwarzman who at the NYPL is pushing library sales like and including Donnell), we still had them soundly outnumbered because, in the end, there was no alternating testimony anymore because there were only more and more of us speaking against the transaction. And that's with some of our people who had to wait longer and unable to stay till 10:40 PM leaving without being ever able to testify.
Borough President Adams, who has acknowledged how he needs to be better informed about and to better understand the proposed sale and shrinkage and the way that funding has been pulled back from the libraries preparatory to launching the plans for these sales, left soon after the hearing began, but has vowed to view the testimony on video. We should applaud state assemblywoman JoAnne Simon for being there throughout the evening and listening all the way through attentively. It's what she should have done (because what is more important than selling off a $120+ million asset like this central destination library), but she wasn't required to.
Our new Masterpiece Video?
If Citizens Defending Libraries had been granted equal access to the audio/visual equipment resources at the hearing we might have run this 3 minute 49 second video we've just released:
About half of these so-called "affordable" housing units that the developer is providing off-site "poor door" style are really more like market rate units. Of the lower income units (not all that low) only a few are big enough for families.
In truth, these so-called "affordable" housing units, pathetically located so far away, are just window dressing for a boondoggle hand off of a very valuable public asset, a sturdy, central destination library that we just recently expanded and fully upgraded to make it state-of-the-art for the computer age. That expansion was at considerable public expense and sacrifice. (Essentially, that complete upgrade makes the building five years newer than the adjacent Ratner building where Hillary located her national campaign headquarters.) Now we want to shrink the library to just one-third size, making it considerably smaller than it was in the first place?
Meanwhile, any possible benefit of this window dressing is wiped up by our elimination of 14,000 truly low-income NYCHA public housing, with NYCHA being attacked much the way libraries are, with targeted underfunding as an excuse for sell-offs to the private sector. Does this, or does this not, sound like a shell game?
Video of Brooklyn Borough President Adams Library Sale and Shrinkage Hearing
Here's the official video on YouTube from Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams:
Testimony of Michael D. D. White:
August 18, 2015
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams
Brooklyn Borough Hall
209 Joralemon Street
Brooklyn, New York 11201
Re: Proposed sale and shrinkage of Brooklyn’s central destination downtown library, the Brooklyn Heights Library on Cadman Plaza, corner of Clinton and Tillary
Dear Borough President Adams:
One of the great glorious things about libraries is that people come to them wanting to know things. I think that is also why there is a long history that civilizations that dismantle their libraries fail.
I think that you as Borough President also want to know what you need to know, one of the reasons for holding this hearing. Because of the extreme lack of transparency on the part of the Brooklyn Public Library in formulating and rolling out its real estate plans, there is much that you, and we as the public, don’t know about this transaction that ought to be freely available information.
That includes much that is just plain embarrassing not to know yet. Correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t think you know whether a private school, Saint Ann’s will be taking home more free and clear cash from this transaction than the city and the BPL will net from selling and shrinking this valuable library. Do you know the answer to that question?
Similarly, the idea that BPL was secretly planning to sell this library going as far back as 2007 or further, but didn’t publicly reveal it until 2013 is appalling. Similarly, the fact that the BPL continues secretively, refusing to respond to Freedom of Information requests to furnish its “strategic real estate plan,” the “Revson Study” and other documents that could reveal which libraries are next on the list.
Do we really know what the cost of repairing the mysteriously broken air conditioning in this library is? Not one of the Community Board 2 Members who voted (either way) on the proposed sale and shrinkage of this library for a pittance ventured that they knew the answer to this question even though that is a primary reason the BPL cites to sell the building. We have made FOIL requests that would shed a lot of light on this question, but the BPL has improperly stonewalled.. . But who after all would be so silly as to sell their home because their air conditioning was on the fritz?
Some other things we don’t know:
There is a lot more to study on the subject of these proposed library sales and so I will also submit to you as an attachment hereto prior testimony from Citizens Defending Libraries given before the City Council.
Are our libraries underfunded right now? Yes, and that underfunding dates back to the plans to convert our libraries into real estate deals. Libraries cost relatively little to fund, but the lure of these deals has become a perverse incentive to underfund libraries as an excuse to sell them off. That said, it is the ultimate in short-sightedness to sell off irreplaceable long-term capital assets to deal with short-term funding deprivations.
Mr. Adams, we have written to you before, but it is worth saying again: Selling, shrinking libraries, putting their resources out of reach, leads to a vicious cycle of decreased democracy and opportunity, leading to greater political and wealth inequality.
Sincerely,
Michael D. D. White
Co-founder, Citizens Defending Libraries
Attachment:
 |
| The air conditioning in Brooklyn Borough Hall was not working leading some testifying to suggest in jest that Borough Hall should be sold since the BPL's refusal to fix the air conditioning is cited as a primary reason for selling off the Brooklyn Heights Library. You can share this on Facebook here. R U A FAN OF THIS THIS IDEA? |
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| This gives an idea of the upstairs crowd. Downstairs there was another crowd in the overflow room. |
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams Still Taking Testimony On Whether Brooklyn Heights Library, Brooklyn’s Central Destination Library In Downtown Brooklyn Should Be Sold And ShrunkThe great news is that Citizens Defending Libraries and the opposition to the sale and shrinkage of this recently expanded and fully upgraded central destination Downtown Brooklyn library were out in force. The bad news is that we pro-sale side had in their arsenal the ability to do longer more highly produced presentations with superior audio/visual resources available, plus the ability to pay people to testify on behalf of the real estate industry and against the community interest.
When Citizens Defending Libraries checked in advance we were told any initial presentations by the BPL and developer would be more restricted, not the 30 to 40 minutes that they got to "sales pitch" the project at the beginning of the evening before the rest of us started to get our chance to speak. We also asked about our ability to use PowerPoint or video aids (we were prepared), and we were told we couldn't, we'd just be able to use placards with pictures to make our points, but that the pro-project side also wouldn't get to do a PowerPoint Computer slide style presentation like they eventually did.
The remarkable thing is that virtually all of those who testified in favor of selling and shrinking the library were in one way or another salaried by the real estate industry, many having an actual interest in the transaction. We are unclear whether we could detect a single legitimate resident of the community who testified in favor of the project. Although the BPL tried bringing some duped people from Sunset Park to assert that their library would move to the head of the list for city funding if this central downtown library is sold, we had more residents from Sunset Park who spoke against this form of so-called "charity" buy-off.
And in the end, even with all those salaried individuals testifying (BPL trustee Hank Gutman works for the law firm representing Blackstone, the world's largest real estate investment firm++, headed by Stephen Schwarzman who at the NYPL is pushing library sales like and including Donnell), we still had them soundly outnumbered because, in the end, there was no alternating testimony anymore because there were only more and more of us speaking against the transaction. And that's with some of our people who had to wait longer and unable to stay till 10:40 PM leaving without being ever able to testify.
Borough President Adams, who has acknowledged how he needs to be better informed about and to better understand the proposed sale and shrinkage and the way that funding has been pulled back from the libraries preparatory to launching the plans for these sales, left soon after the hearing began, but has vowed to view the testimony on video. We should applaud state assemblywoman JoAnne Simon for being there throughout the evening and listening all the way through attentively. It's what she should have done (because what is more important than selling off a $120+ million asset like this central destination library), but she wasn't required to.
Our new Masterpiece Video?
If Citizens Defending Libraries had been granted equal access to the audio/visual equipment resources at the hearing we might have run this 3 minute 49 second video we've just released:
Selling Our Libraries!Here is press coverage of the evening (comments are possible and valuable to read too):
• Brooklyn Daily Eagle: Impassioned debate continues at mobbed Brooklyn Heights Library hearing, by Mary Frost, August 19, 2015.
Resident Lucy Koteen said the developers would receive the Brooklyn Heights assets, which she estimated to be worth $120 million, "at a very low price," roughly $52 million. She accused the developers of providing "talking points" to the library board members. "It's all a charade, smoke and mirrors," she said.
Michael D.D. White, co-founder of Citizens Defending Libraries, pointed to the "extreme lack of transparency" from Brooklyn Public Library. "There's much we don't know, and it ought to be freely-available information," he said.
Dr. Jane Lee Delgado said that out of 20 library trustees, seven were connected to banking or real estate, "and at least one is an officially registered lobbyist." Offering the site of the Heights branch to developers was like "throwing chum into a school of sharks," she said.
Maria Roca, founder of the Friends of Sunset Park said the proposal "raises many serious concerns. It ignores the needs of fast-growing Downtown Brooklyn. These needs are: schools, hospitals, infrastructure and transportation. These continue to be ignored, and the building frenzy of ever more expensive housing continues."
Carole Raftrey, of Build Up NYCCarole Raftrey, of Build Up NYC
Retired mechanical engineer Norman Savitt called the library "a deeply flawed project that will benefit the few."
Rob Solano, speaking for Churches United for Fair Housing, said he felt uncomfortable with the idea that the affordable housing would be placed in Clinton Hill. "Separate but equal is not right," he said.
* * * *
Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York said the good government group was "concerned with the process around how this decision to sell the library's assets was made from the inception, and whether the ramifications of the public steward - BPL and the city - no longer having control of the land was explored in full."
Since the public will no longer own the land, "the new library will be vulnerable to the future whims of the condo developers," she said. "There are ways of structuring the library's interest that would not only protect the public's use of a library facility but guarantee the library an income stream in the future."
• The Brooklyn Paper- Critics: Heights library housing plan separates rich and poor, By Max Jaeger, August 20, 2015
"The proposal calls for building apartments for the poor in a poor neighborhood a mile away from Brooklyn Heights," said Cobble Hill resident Donald Fleck, one of several residents who spoke against the divided housing during a public hearing on the plans for the library development at Borough Hall on Tuesday. "This proposal perpetuates the two-cities model by keeping the poor with the poor and the affluent with the affluent."
• Capital NY/Politico: Debate continues over Brooklyn Heights Library redevelopment, By Kelly Weill and Sally Goldenberg, August 19, 2015
• The Indypendent: Turning Libraries Into Condos, By Peter Rugh, August 5, 2015
"Shut not your doors to me proud libraries," Whitman wrote. We in present-day New York would do well to listen. Libraries, like other bastions of the public sphere - our parks, hospitals, schools, public housing - are under siege from a real estate industry that sees the finite space of our city as a bottomless cash cow.The Brooklyn Paper, link and excerpt above, covered a very important aspect of what is being proposed.
* * *
In a July 15 roll call vote nearly drowned out by chants of "Not for sale!" from the audience, members of Brooklyn Community Board 2 in Brooklyn Heights voted 25-14 with four abstentions in support of Hudson's plan. Under city law, the proposed luxury condo tower still needs to be reviewed by the Brooklyn Borough President and the City Planning Commission and then be voted on by City Council.
* * *
"We used to fight about getting enough funds to build and expand our libraries," said Michael White a former city planner and co-founder of the activist group Citizens Defending Libraries. "Now we're fighting about not getting enough money so that we don't have to sell off and shrink our libraries."
* * *
The defunding of New York's libraries has come at a time when their popularity has been surging. From 2002 to 2014, annual attendance at programs put on by libraries increased from 1.7 to 2.8 million people per year. Checkouts of physical and e-books and other items have increased by 30 percent. Altogether, the city's libraries receive 37 million visitors per year, a number that exceeds the combined annual attendance at New York's major professional sports events, performing arts centers, museums, historical sites, botanical gardens and zoos.
* * *
"They've let things deteriorate," said Tom Angotti, a professor of urban planning at Hunter College and author of New York for Sale: Community Planning Confronts Global Real Estate, remarking on what he describes as the New York's pervasive neoliberal development model, "So now they can turn around and say, `You see, this is not working. We'll give it to a private company and they'll know how to use it.'"
* * *
The sale of the Brooklyn Heights Library is the latest in a series of transactions with developers involving New York's libraries. These privatizations began under Bloomberg and have continued with de Blasio. Two prior dealings between the libraries and the real estate industry offer a glimpse into what the public can expect from such activity. It doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
* * *
"It's a matter of community," said Angotti. "Libraries are one of the few democratic places left in the city. You go to a local library, people are reading, going to events, socializing, people of all ages. They are places where people can go for advice and look for information, using a variety of different media. It has a value that goes beyond the dollar value. It's a value to people."
The proposed deal is now under review by Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams. He will hold a public hearing on the proposed sale at Brooklyn Borough Hall on August 18 at 6pm. In a recent interview with The Brooklyn Paper, Adams said he envisions book-free libraries in the future.
"We no longer need shelves of books in libraries to look impressive," he commented.
On the sale of the Brooklyn Heights Library, Adams remains officially non-committal.
"I look forward to reviewing Community Board 2's recommendations and hearing from local residents about the proposed plans for the Brooklyn Heights branch of the Brooklyn Public Library," Adams said in a statement released by a press spokesperson.
The fate of the highrise and the life of the library underneath it might just depend on the pressure that comes from below, which critics like White vow to supply.
"We'll be talking with the borough president," said White, who, along with other members of Citizens Defending Libraries, plans on attending the hearings Adams is holding on the sale in August. "You cannot sell off a publicly owned library like this without going through a public process, and we're still at the very beginning of that process."
About half of these so-called "affordable" housing units that the developer is providing off-site "poor door" style are really more like market rate units. Of the lower income units (not all that low) only a few are big enough for families.
In truth, these so-called "affordable" housing units, pathetically located so far away, are just window dressing for a boondoggle hand off of a very valuable public asset, a sturdy, central destination library that we just recently expanded and fully upgraded to make it state-of-the-art for the computer age. That expansion was at considerable public expense and sacrifice. (Essentially, that complete upgrade makes the building five years newer than the adjacent Ratner building where Hillary located her national campaign headquarters.) Now we want to shrink the library to just one-third size, making it considerably smaller than it was in the first place?
Meanwhile, any possible benefit of this window dressing is wiped up by our elimination of 14,000 truly low-income NYCHA public housing, with NYCHA being attacked much the way libraries are, with targeted underfunding as an excuse for sell-offs to the private sector. Does this, or does this not, sound like a shell game?
Video of Brooklyn Borough President Adams Library Sale and Shrinkage Hearing
Here's the official video on YouTube from Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams:
One Brooklyn- Unified Land Use Review Process Hearing (ULURP), August 18, 2015We may put up some highlights, but if you want to comment on what you thought were the highlights and where (minutes and seconds) they can be found, let's put them up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M5AXZ2g2Ac
Testimony of Michael D. D. White:
August 18, 2015
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams
Brooklyn Borough Hall
209 Joralemon Street
Brooklyn, New York 11201
Re: Proposed sale and shrinkage of Brooklyn’s central destination downtown library, the Brooklyn Heights Library on Cadman Plaza, corner of Clinton and Tillary
Dear Borough President Adams:
One of the great glorious things about libraries is that people come to them wanting to know things. I think that is also why there is a long history that civilizations that dismantle their libraries fail.
I think that you as Borough President also want to know what you need to know, one of the reasons for holding this hearing. Because of the extreme lack of transparency on the part of the Brooklyn Public Library in formulating and rolling out its real estate plans, there is much that you, and we as the public, don’t know about this transaction that ought to be freely available information.
That includes much that is just plain embarrassing not to know yet. Correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t think you know whether a private school, Saint Ann’s will be taking home more free and clear cash from this transaction than the city and the BPL will net from selling and shrinking this valuable library. Do you know the answer to that question?
Similarly, the idea that BPL was secretly planning to sell this library going as far back as 2007 or further, but didn’t publicly reveal it until 2013 is appalling. Similarly, the fact that the BPL continues secretively, refusing to respond to Freedom of Information requests to furnish its “strategic real estate plan,” the “Revson Study” and other documents that could reveal which libraries are next on the list.
Do we really know what the cost of repairing the mysteriously broken air conditioning in this library is? Not one of the Community Board 2 Members who voted (either way) on the proposed sale and shrinkage of this library for a pittance ventured that they knew the answer to this question even though that is a primary reason the BPL cites to sell the building. We have made FOIL requests that would shed a lot of light on this question, but the BPL has improperly stonewalled.. . But who after all would be so silly as to sell their home because their air conditioning was on the fritz?
Some other things we don’t know:
• The true and complete costs to the public of selling and shrinking this library as proposed. This recently enlarged and fully upgraded library, a sturdy building in good shape, would cost at least $60 Million to build from scratch and the land and right to expand the public uses on the site is assuredly worth at least another $60 million, over $120 millin all together, but the BPL may net virtually nothing or even wind up in a financial hole selling it.I know that as Borough President you have been thinking about what your constituency wants. In that regard you have been wondering about whether the Brooklyn public would prefer more expensive digital books in place of physical ones for which circulation has gone up. I think you’ll find the answer is that the preference is the reverse, it’s strongly for physical books, and I offer you (attached) the resource of a Citizens Defending Libraries web page with a lot of links to study up on that subject. It is also surprisingly expensive and less beneficial to keep books off-site from the libraries.
• Information about the historic nature of the building, including BPL communications with Landmarks.
• How much the BPL is spending on high-priced lobbyists and PR firms to push for the sale of libraries.
• Information about book counts: what they have been, what they are now and what they are intended to be in the future. For instance, the BPL and the architect representing it and the developer in this regard have not been able to state what the book shelf capacity of the entire Brooklyn Heights Library is or what it will be reduced to in the future.
There is a lot more to study on the subject of these proposed library sales and so I will also submit to you as an attachment hereto prior testimony from Citizens Defending Libraries given before the City Council.
Are our libraries underfunded right now? Yes, and that underfunding dates back to the plans to convert our libraries into real estate deals. Libraries cost relatively little to fund, but the lure of these deals has become a perverse incentive to underfund libraries as an excuse to sell them off. That said, it is the ultimate in short-sightedness to sell off irreplaceable long-term capital assets to deal with short-term funding deprivations.
Mr. Adams, we have written to you before, but it is worth saying again: Selling, shrinking libraries, putting their resources out of reach, leads to a vicious cycle of decreased democracy and opportunity, leading to greater political and wealth inequality.
Sincerely,
Michael D. D. White
Co-founder, Citizens Defending Libraries
Attachment:
Physical Books vs. Digital BooksAttachment:
Previous testimony at City Council Hearings
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams Still Taking Testimony On Whether Brooklyn Heights Library, Brooklyn’s Central Destination Library In Downtown Brooklyn Should Be Sold And Shrunk
Here is a form you, and people you know, can use (many people completed and turned one in the 18th, the night oral testimony was taken) to facility the submission of testimony which can be done by email. Also below is the text version of what is in that form if you want to use that text to tailor something to send in.
 |
| You can print this form and use it to submit testimony |
askeric@brooklynbp.nyc.govWritten testimony should be mailed to or dropped off at:
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams
Brooklyn Borough Hall
209 Joralemon Street
Brooklyn, New York 11201
Now is the time to ensure that Borough President Adams understand the importance of being on the side of the people on this matter, not the real estate interests.
We have been very effective in getting testimony in to Eric Adams this way. As of Thursday September 3, 2015 we got in more than 1,500 completed testimony forms to his office this way. Here on the morning of September 8th what 2,000+ forms look like:
 |
| 2000+ testimony forms |
Here in TEXT form is a checklist of reasons you can include when you testify that you are against the sale and shrinkage of the Brooklyn Heights Library:
• The library, which I understand has a probable value of over $120 million, is being sold for absurdly little.
• The BPL has been extraordinarily non-transparent in all ways including keeping its plan to sell this library secret since 2007 (or before) and refusing to publicly disclose its "strategic real estate plan" revealing what libraries it wants to turn into real estate deals next.
• We should not be shrinking this library, especially down to just one-third size, especially since it was just enlarged and completely upgraded in 1993 at considerable public expense and sacrifice.
• It is impossible to guarantee that any proceeds from the sale (which all go to the city) would ever come back to be spent on libraries and, even if they were, the net amount is paltry, perhaps close to or even less than zero.
• The library is a sturdy beautifully designed building with space that can easily be put to good many good uses in different ways.
• The library's "Business and Career" functions should not be moved out of the Downtown Brooklyn business district, especially when it is growing.
• We should not be selling off our public infrastructure to private developers, especially educational infrastructure when, for example, our schools are not keeping pace with new development.
• It is discriminatory and anti-democratic to turn libraries into real estate boondoggles.
• I don't like that Mayor de Blasio was taking money from the development team that was chosen while their application was pending. (Developers he said were "lurking right behind the curtain . . very anxious to get their hands on these valuable properties.")
• Stuck in the bottom of a residential, privately owned building, we won't ever be able to enlarge this library to correct this shrinkage or accommodate growth.
• Selling libraries to developers "because they are underfunded"creates a perverse incentive to underfund libraries, exactly what we have witnessed.
• The library is being shrunk down to a preordained size without bothering to design a new library first or figure out how many books it should hold.
• I want lots of books in our libraries and this plan gets rid of them.
• Selling this public asset so cheaply will lead to sell-offs of our other assets including sale of more libraries.
• We can't sell off our libraries for a few so-called "affordable" housing units, especially when these units "poor door" style are insultingly far away and we are, at the same time, shedding 14,000 truly affordable NYCHA public housing units using the same tactics and excuses employed to sell libraries.
• A private school (Saint Ann's) is benefitting in a significant and undisclosed amount from the loss that the public will suffer if the library is sold and shrunk (and may even get more from the sale than the city and BPL will net).
• I don't believe the fairy tales the BPL is telling about how it `can't fix' library air conditioning. (I wouldn't sell my home for this reason!)
• No extra space will be built at the Grand Army Plaza Library to house any shift of the "Business and Career" functions to that location and there are no designs or cost estimations for how to cram those functions in.
• Library use and circulation of physical books is up dramatically and our libraries should grow and be funded to accommodate that.
• This plan is a short-sighted sacrifice of an irreplaceable asset, inexcusable for a wealthy city like ours.
• We should have learned from the Donnell Library sale debacle (that this sale is modeled on!) how terrible mistakes like this are.
• The environmental repercussions of this project have not been adequately considered and assessed.
• Civilizations that dismantle their libraries generally fail.
• ALL OF THE ABOVE!
Monday, August 17, 2015
NEWS ADVISORY- Tuesday, August 18th, Eric Adams To Hold First Ever Borough President Hearing On Proposed Fire Sale of Major Public Asset, Central Destination Library In Downtown Brooklyn
NEWS ADVISORY-
WHAT: Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams to hold hearing to take public testimony on proposed fire sale of major public asset, central destination library in Downtown Brooklyn
WHEN: Tuesday, August 18, 2015, 6:00 P.M.
WHERE: Borough President's Courtroom, Brooklyn Borough Hall, 209 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, New York 11201
WHAT ELSE?: Citizens Defending Libraries will be on hand to provide facts about the decision before Borough President Adams and its significance.
This Tuesday, August 18, 2015, 6:00 P.M hearing Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams is holding a hearing to take public testimony on the proposed sale for a pittance of a valuable publicly owned asset worth well over $100 million, (probably $120 million or above), the Brooklyn Heights Library, the central destination library in Downtown Brooklyn on Cadman Plaza West at the corner of Tillary and Clinton Streets.
In connection therewith, Citizens Defending Libraries has just released this 3 minute 49 second video (it includes a few choice words from Mayor de Blasio in the subject of selling libraries):
This will be the first-ever community borough president hearing in all of New York City on the proposed sale and drastic shrinkage of a major New
York City library (proposed to be turned into a real estate deal). The hearing to listen to the public is required under ULURP (Uniform Land Use Review Procedure)
because it is a sale of city-owned property.
What Borough President Adams does after listening to the public's views at this hearing will be momentous. If Mr. Adams disapproves the sale it will constitute a rejection of the “City For Sale” agenda launched and in full swing when the Bloomberg administration left office. If Mr. Adams approves the proposal it will set the table for future developers to feast on public assets, including more libraries, laying out an exact playbook developers and complicit public officials can use to target which assets they want.
“Developers will swarm around our public assets in droves,” says Citizens Defending Libraries co-founder Michael D. D. White, “because any approval of this deal would also announce to them just how much below their true value to the public such treasures can be sold.”
Mr. Adams has been forewarned because the lack of transparency and the lack of public benefit in real estate deals and library shrinkage plans previously announced by library administration officials has been well documented with notorious acknowledged blunders (the Donnell Library sale and NYPL Central Library Plan). More is set forth at length in our press release. Borough President Adams is also clearly forewarned because the proposed sale and shrinkage of the Brooklyn Heights library for a paltry sum is closely modeled on the reviled Donnell sale. There are even links between those involved in the transaction. (Fuller details here.)
Mr. Adams is also clearly forewarned because Bill de Blasio has warned what we see going on here.
“It’s
public land and public facilities and public value under threat. . .
and once again we see, lurking right behind the curtain, real estate
developers who are very anxious to get their hands on these valuable
properties,” (1:00) said Bill de Blasio standing on the steps of the 42nd Street Library with Citizens Defending Libraries
in July 2013 calling for a halt to this sale of the Brooklyn Heights
Library and other threatened NYC libraries. It was right after this
that his campaign approval ratings in his race for mayor skyrocketed.
Unfortunately, just a few months later de Blasio was receiving money sent to him by the development team now proposed to be handed this library at the same time their application for the sale was pending.
The Brooklyn Heights Library is a central destination library in Downtown Brooklyn. It is now 63,000 square feet. It is now that large because, at considerable public expense and sacrifice, it was substantially enlarged (by one-third) and fully upgraded, reopening in the fall of 1993. That complete renovation makes it five years newer than the adjacent Forest City Ratner One Pierrepont Plaza Morgan Stanley building where presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has located her national headquarters (more than 80,000 square feet of space).
Candidate de Blasio said the library should open up its books. Instead, the BPL is embracing non-transparency as its modus operandi in pushing this deal. That’s something, Citizens Defending Libraries has warned the Mr. Adams about. . .
. . . Indeed, BPL minutes show that in 2011 when BPL president Linda Johnson was explaining to her board the need to keep information about the “the real estate plan” in “strict confidence” she reminded the BPL board that the “goal was to get far enough into the plan with this Mayor [Bloomberg] so that when a new Mayor takes office, the plan will be deep in progress and he or she will not derail it.”
There is another absolutely startling major part of this story that remains to be flushed out with further investigation and disclosure. The developer has refused to say how much of a payday the private Saint Ann's School is getting from the public's sale and shrinkage of the library. He asserts that this is because it's a “private” transaction, even though it's driving this public one. (Should Saint Ann's be paying the BPL for this benefit?- It doesn’t seem like that is being negotiated by the BPL.) Quite likely, Saint Ann’s may get more money free and clear from this sale than the BPL is netting. (There have been recent newsworthy developments in this regard.)
Community groups and the CB2 Land Use Committee have called for a halt to further discretionary approvals of additional massive new residential towers like this one, until the PS8 infrastructure problem gets addressed. This is another problem Mr. Adams has foreknowledge of by reason of which he should not approve this subtraction from the public’s assets and infrastructure.
The ways in which this giveaway of public assets is designed to promote gentrifying displacements, economic and racial segregation are unmistakable. Right now the library is a public asset democratically serving everyone equally, drawing patrons from all over to the borough’s downtown on the border of increasingly elite on Brooklyn Heights. Shutting down the library would result in lower income patrons coming to the neighborhood being, in effect, "disinvited" In the place of a library serving everybody a high-end luxury tower would be built. As a sop to excuse the inexcusable, give the mayor plausible cover to sell public assets cheap, and try to divide the community, a few so-called "affordable" housing units the developer built "poor door" style at a far remove from Brooklyn's burgeoning downtown and upper crust Brooklyn Heights. 114 units would be built altogether, but fully half of those units would essentially be market rate with many units being small units such as studios.
The lack of transparency on the part of the BPL should itself present an irrefutable reason for Mr. Adams to refuse the approval the BPL is requesting. As with Donnell and the Central Library Plan, lack of transparency often goes hand in hand with detriments to, and sell-outs of, the public interest and should be treated as an indicator of such.
Information has been requested of the BPL and the BPL has stonewalled and not furnished that information in response.
What is this the first ever hearing of its kind?: No such hearings were required when the Donnell Library was suddenly and secretively sold off because, in that case, the library, not the city, owned the land. Because the proposed sell-off of this Downtown Brooklyn Library is closely modeled on, almost identical to, the sale of Donnell Library this is an opportunity for the public to send a clear signal in retrospect that the Donnell sale was also wrong.. Similarly, such a hearing isn't required for the now threatened sale of another major destination library, SIBL, Science, Industry and Business Library at 34th Street. What Brooklyn Borough President Adams decides to do will likely affect the proposed sale of that Manhattan library too.
CONTACT:
Carolyn E. McIntyre, Michael D. D. White
Michael White, 718-834-6184, mddwhite {at aol.com
Carolyn McIntyre, 917-757-6542 cemac62 {at aol.com
Follow us on Twitter: @defendinglibraries
For photos and videos of prior Citizens Defending Libraries rallies opposing the sale, shrinkage, underfunding of New York City libraries, and elimination of books and librarians in the year and a half since its founding, see:
PHOTO GALLERIES- PAST EVENTS
http://citizensdefendinglibraries.blogspot.com/2014/01/photo-galleries-past-events.html
# # #
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams To Hold Hearing Tuesday, August 18th, On Proposed Fire Sale of Major Public Asset, Central Destination Library In Downtown Brooklyn- Citizens Defending Libraries Video Release.New York City
WHAT: Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams to hold hearing to take public testimony on proposed fire sale of major public asset, central destination library in Downtown Brooklyn
WHEN: Tuesday, August 18, 2015, 6:00 P.M.
WHERE: Borough President's Courtroom, Brooklyn Borough Hall, 209 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, New York 11201
WHAT ELSE?: Citizens Defending Libraries will be on hand to provide facts about the decision before Borough President Adams and its significance.
This Tuesday, August 18, 2015, 6:00 P.M hearing Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams is holding a hearing to take public testimony on the proposed sale for a pittance of a valuable publicly owned asset worth well over $100 million, (probably $120 million or above), the Brooklyn Heights Library, the central destination library in Downtown Brooklyn on Cadman Plaza West at the corner of Tillary and Clinton Streets.
In connection therewith, Citizens Defending Libraries has just released this 3 minute 49 second video (it includes a few choice words from Mayor de Blasio in the subject of selling libraries):
An Unprecedented Approval of Sale Would Set Precedent Affecting the City
Selling of our Brooklyn Public Libraries
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD88Puy3px8
 |
| Brooklyn Heights central destination downtown library |
What Borough President Adams does after listening to the public's views at this hearing will be momentous. If Mr. Adams disapproves the sale it will constitute a rejection of the “City For Sale” agenda launched and in full swing when the Bloomberg administration left office. If Mr. Adams approves the proposal it will set the table for future developers to feast on public assets, including more libraries, laying out an exact playbook developers and complicit public officials can use to target which assets they want.
“Developers will swarm around our public assets in droves,” says Citizens Defending Libraries co-founder Michael D. D. White, “because any approval of this deal would also announce to them just how much below their true value to the public such treasures can be sold.”
Mr. Adams has been forewarned because the lack of transparency and the lack of public benefit in real estate deals and library shrinkage plans previously announced by library administration officials has been well documented with notorious acknowledged blunders (the Donnell Library sale and NYPL Central Library Plan). More is set forth at length in our press release. Borough President Adams is also clearly forewarned because the proposed sale and shrinkage of the Brooklyn Heights library for a paltry sum is closely modeled on the reviled Donnell sale. There are even links between those involved in the transaction. (Fuller details here.)
PRESS RELEASE & NEWS ADVISORY- Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams To Hold Hearing Tuesday, August 18th, On Proposed Fire Sale of Major Public Asset, Central Destination Library In Downtown BrooklynThe Donnell sale and Central Library Plan shrinkage were overseen by NYPL Chief Operating Officer David Offensend (having come from Blackstone Group spin-off Evercore). At the same time COO Offensend was pushing through these NYPL transactions his wife, Janet Offensend, assumed an important place on the Brooklyn Public Library board where the sale plans for the Brooklyn Heights Library were concurrently conceived, together with the BPL’s still secretively withheld “strategic real estate plan” that envisions similarly turning the rest of the real estate of the Brooklyn Public Library system (“over 1,000,000 square feet of real estate” according to BPL president Linda Johnson) into leveraging and redevelopment deals.
http://citizensdefendinglibraries.blogspot.com/2015/08/press-release-news-advisory-tuesday.html
Mr. Adams is also clearly forewarned because Bill de Blasio has warned what we see going on here.
Unfortunately, just a few months later de Blasio was receiving money sent to him by the development team now proposed to be handed this library at the same time their application for the sale was pending.
The Brooklyn Heights Library is a central destination library in Downtown Brooklyn. It is now 63,000 square feet. It is now that large because, at considerable public expense and sacrifice, it was substantially enlarged (by one-third) and fully upgraded, reopening in the fall of 1993. That complete renovation makes it five years newer than the adjacent Forest City Ratner One Pierrepont Plaza Morgan Stanley building where presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has located her national headquarters (more than 80,000 square feet of space).
Candidate de Blasio said the library should open up its books. Instead, the BPL is embracing non-transparency as its modus operandi in pushing this deal. That’s something, Citizens Defending Libraries has warned the Mr. Adams about. . .
. . . Indeed, BPL minutes show that in 2011 when BPL president Linda Johnson was explaining to her board the need to keep information about the “the real estate plan” in “strict confidence” she reminded the BPL board that the “goal was to get far enough into the plan with this Mayor [Bloomberg] so that when a new Mayor takes office, the plan will be deep in progress and he or she will not derail it.”
There is another absolutely startling major part of this story that remains to be flushed out with further investigation and disclosure. The developer has refused to say how much of a payday the private Saint Ann's School is getting from the public's sale and shrinkage of the library. He asserts that this is because it's a “private” transaction, even though it's driving this public one. (Should Saint Ann's be paying the BPL for this benefit?- It doesn’t seem like that is being negotiated by the BPL.) Quite likely, Saint Ann’s may get more money free and clear from this sale than the BPL is netting. (There have been recent newsworthy developments in this regard.)
Community groups and the CB2 Land Use Committee have called for a halt to further discretionary approvals of additional massive new residential towers like this one, until the PS8 infrastructure problem gets addressed. This is another problem Mr. Adams has foreknowledge of by reason of which he should not approve this subtraction from the public’s assets and infrastructure.
The ways in which this giveaway of public assets is designed to promote gentrifying displacements, economic and racial segregation are unmistakable. Right now the library is a public asset democratically serving everyone equally, drawing patrons from all over to the borough’s downtown on the border of increasingly elite on Brooklyn Heights. Shutting down the library would result in lower income patrons coming to the neighborhood being, in effect, "disinvited" In the place of a library serving everybody a high-end luxury tower would be built. As a sop to excuse the inexcusable, give the mayor plausible cover to sell public assets cheap, and try to divide the community, a few so-called "affordable" housing units the developer built "poor door" style at a far remove from Brooklyn's burgeoning downtown and upper crust Brooklyn Heights. 114 units would be built altogether, but fully half of those units would essentially be market rate with many units being small units such as studios.
The lack of transparency on the part of the BPL should itself present an irrefutable reason for Mr. Adams to refuse the approval the BPL is requesting. As with Donnell and the Central Library Plan, lack of transparency often goes hand in hand with detriments to, and sell-outs of, the public interest and should be treated as an indicator of such.
Information has been requested of the BPL and the BPL has stonewalled and not furnished that information in response.
What is this the first ever hearing of its kind?: No such hearings were required when the Donnell Library was suddenly and secretively sold off because, in that case, the library, not the city, owned the land. Because the proposed sell-off of this Downtown Brooklyn Library is closely modeled on, almost identical to, the sale of Donnell Library this is an opportunity for the public to send a clear signal in retrospect that the Donnell sale was also wrong.. Similarly, such a hearing isn't required for the now threatened sale of another major destination library, SIBL, Science, Industry and Business Library at 34th Street. What Brooklyn Borough President Adams decides to do will likely affect the proposed sale of that Manhattan library too.
CONTACT:
Carolyn E. McIntyre, Michael D. D. White
Michael White, 718-834-6184, mddwhite {at aol.com
Carolyn McIntyre, 917-757-6542 cemac62 {at aol.com
Follow us on Twitter: @defendinglibraries
For photos and videos of prior Citizens Defending Libraries rallies opposing the sale, shrinkage, underfunding of New York City libraries, and elimination of books and librarians in the year and a half since its founding, see:
PHOTO GALLERIES- PAST EVENTS
http://citizensdefendinglibraries.blogspot.com/2014/01/photo-galleries-past-events.html
# # #
PRESS RELEASE & NEWS ADVISORY- Tuesday, August 18th, Eric Adams To Hold First Ever Borough President Hearing On Proposed Fire Sale of Major Public Asset, Central Destination Library In Downtown Brooklyn
PRESS RELEASE & NEWS ADVISORY-
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams To Hold Hearing Tuesday, August 18th, On Proposed Fire Sale of Major Public Asset, Central Destination Library In Downtown BrooklynNew York City
WHAT: Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams to hold hearing to take public testimony on proposed fire sale of major public asset, central destination library in Downtown Brooklyn
WHEN: Tuesday, August 18, 2015, 6:00 P.M.
WHERE: Borough President's Courtroom, Brooklyn Borough Hall, 209 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, New York 11201
WHAT ELSE?: Citizens Defending Libraries will be on hand to provide facts about the decision before Borough President Adams and its significance.
This Tuesday, August 18, 2015, 6:00 P.M hearing Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams is holding a hearing to take public testimony on the proposed sale for a pittance of a valuable publicly owned asset worth well over $100 million, (probably $120 million or above), the Brooklyn Heights Library, the central destination library in Downtown Brooklyn on Cadman Plaza West at the corner of Tillary and Clinton Streets.
In connection therewith, Citizens Defending Libraries will release prior to the hearing a 3 minute 51 second video that includes a few choice words from Mayor de Blasio on the subject of selling libraries. In connection therewith Citizens Defending Libraries is considering some limited exclusives to news media that approach us promptly.
NEW AND NOTEWORTHY BACKGROUND NOW IN THE MIX:Coming Very Soon: Selling our Libraries
• If the excuse for selling off New York City libraries at a fraction of their value is that libraries are so badly underfunded we can't keep them why was a "victory" declared in the campaign for adequate library funding? See:
• Thursday, August 13, 2015, Was Library Administration Officials' Campaign For Restoration of Library Funding Done With Great Fanfare A Victory? No. Was It Even A Great Campaign? No.• Preparatory to the Borough President's hearing, the conduct of three Brooklyn Community Board 2 meetings involved some huge embarrassments and questionable conduct. Much of that involves conduct the New York City Conflicts of Interest Board Council has been asked to investigate that relates, as well to New York Times coverage respecting the benefits Saint Ann's, a private school, will get from the loss the public will suffer if the library is sold and shrunk. See:
• Monday, August 3, 2015, Conflicts of Interest Inquiry- Inquiry Submitted To The New York City Conflicts of Interest Board Respecting Brooklyn Community Board 2 and The Proposed Sale and Shrinkage of Brooklyn Heights LibraryUnprecedented Vote Will Set Precedent Affecting the City
|
| Brooklyn Heights central destination downtown library |
What Borough President Adams does after listening to the public's views at this hearing will be momentous. If Mr. Adams disapproves the sale it will constitute a rejection of the “City For Sale” agenda launched and in full swing when the Bloomberg administration left office. If Mr. Adams approves the proposal it will set the table for future developers to feast on public assets, including more libraries, laying out an exact playbook developers and complicit public officials can use to target which assets they want.
“Developers will swarm around our public assets in droves,” says Citizens Defending Libraries co-founder Michael D. D. White, “because any approval of this deal would also announce to them just how much below their true value to the public such treasures can be sold.”
Forewarned By lack of Transparency and Benefit in Previous Real Estate Deals Proposed By Library Administration Officials
 |
| Luxury tower replacing Donnell on left. Brooklyn Heights luxury tower to replace library on right |
• Donnell Library Sale. An inexcusable debacle, that even library administration officials now all acknowledge, in 2007, when the real estate market was at its height, the NYPL sold the public’s beloved Donnell Library, a five-stories and 97,000 square foot destination library on 53rd Street across from MoMA, to net the far less than $33 million. How much less than $33 million did the NYPL net?: From that must be subtracted what was spent on high-priced consultants to justify the deal, and, according to new revelations in Scott Sherman’s new book, “Patience and Fortitude: Power, Real Estate, and the Fight to Save a Public Library” (released 6/23/2015) annual rent for a temporary replacement library started, with an escalation clause, at $850,000 per year. The so-called “replacement” library for Donnell, less than one-third size at only 28,000 square feet, is not due to be delivered until the end of 2015, perhaps 2016. That library will be largely underground and largely bookless. If a full-scale Donnell Library were being built, the NYPL would have suffered a substantial loss of cash due to this sale.
For how much below value was Donnell sold? At the time of the sale the Mid-Manhattan block on which it sat was documented has having the highest square foot values in the city. The penthouse apartment in 50-story luxury tower replacing Donnell is being marketed for $60 million. Other of the luxury apartments in the building are now selling for about what the library sold to net. 114 luxury hotel guest room in the building were sold to the Chinese for a record-setting price of $230 million.
• The NYPL Central Library Plan. In a major news story of May 2014 the de Blasio administration derailed the NYPL’s Central Library Plan, a proposal for consolidated shrinkage of over 400,000 square feet of central destination library space down to just 80,000 square feet. The Mid-Manhattan Library and Science, Industry and Business Library were to be sold and the stacks for the 42nd Street Central Research Library holding three million books would have been destroyed, the books sent away to New Jersey. Days after this shrinkage plan was killed it was revealed that it would have cost over $500 million, hundreds of millions of dollars more than the NYPL had previously been publicizing in promoting its plan.Mr. Adams is also clearly forewarned because the proposed sale and shrinkage of the Brooklyn Heights library for a paltry sum is closely modeled on the reviled Donnell sale. There are even links between the transactions.
The Donnell sale and Central Library Plan shrinkage were overseen by NYPL Chief Operating Officer David Offensend (having come from Blackstone Group spin-off Evercore). At the same time COO Offensend was pushing through these NYPL transactions his wife, Janet Offensend, assumed an important place on the Brooklyn Public Library board where the sale plans for the Brooklyn Heights Library were concurrently conceived, together with the BPL’s still secretively withheld “strategic real estate plan” that envisions similarly turning the rest of the real estate of the Brooklyn Public Library system (“over 1,000,000 square feet of real estate” according to BPL president Linda Johnson) into leveraging and redevelopment deals.
Forewarning by Bill de Blasio
Mr. Adams is also clearly forewarned because Bill de Blasio has warned what we see going on here.
Unfortunately, just a few months later de Blasio was receiving money sent to him by the development team now proposed to be handed this library at the same time their application for the sale was pending.
Value of the Brooklyn Heights Library To The Public
(* Because Citizens Defending Libraries sees the fire sale of our public assets in deals rigged to benefit befit those at that top as an outgrowth of and exacerbation of escalating income, wealth and power inequality in our society and that is a national campaign issue, Citizens Defending Libraries has invited candidate Clinton to hold an event with Citizens Defending Libraries about protection of public assets and the public commons outside the library at the corner of Tillary and Clinton. That invitation is being extended to other presidential candidates as well.)
 |
| The two central destination Brooklyn libraries designed by Francis Keally, Grand Army Plaza on left and Brooklyn Heights on right |
As a central destination library, the Brooklyn Heights Library was designed and intended to serve not only all of Brooklyn, especially the downtown business district, but Manhattan has well, particularly lower Manhattan. It was envisioned that it would attract and serve some of the same patrons using the 34th Street Science, Industry and Business library (SIBL). Unfortunately, SIBL is now threatened to be shut down with a simultaneous sale. Of Brooklyn’s two important central destination libraries, the Brooklyn Heights Library is the only one that is handicapped accessible by subway.
 |
| Libraries threatened by simultaneous sales, Brooklyn Heights on left, SIBL on right |
The sturdy library is in excellent shape and its space extraordinarily serviceable and adaptable. Similar to the 42nd Street Central Reference Library it was set up to hold books for easy on-the-spot retrieval from two underground floors. Almost 38,000 square feet of the existing library is above-ground. In the case of the proposed replacement library, only 15,000 square feet of space would be above ground.
The mayor should now fulfill his campaign promises by stopping the progress of this proposed sale in its tracks. As a candidate for election de Blasio said that valuable libraries should not be sold for far less than their value. That is the exact terrible thing we witness happening here.
Sale of The Library Is NOT Yielding Funds For Libraries
Mr. Adams should be forewarned and forearmed that the proposed sale of the library is a sell-off and overall reduction of library assets plain and simple.
If the Brooklyn Heights downtown library is sold for shrinkage, there is no assurance that paltry sums, if any, gleaned from the sale, all going to the city, would ever subsequently come back for libraries. Libraries, highly valued by the public using them more than ever, cost relatively little to fund, but this sale is apt to encourage further underfunding like this.
The BPL has cynically said that if the Brooklyn Heights Library is sold, four libraries (Pacific Street, Sunset park, Washington Irving and Walt Whitman) will be moved to the top of the their list for relatively small amounts of funding from the city, a possible $21.5 million in capital funding, thus probably expected to garner political acquiescence for a library sale from the elected officials who represent districts where those libraries are found. Manipulating these libraries to the front of the list for even small amounts of funding is not necessarily fair and could disadvantage deserving higher-need libraries from other districts. At the same time nothing would prevent libraries overall from suffering reduced funding as the developer community, aware of a “program” of self-cannibalizing funding pressures to use continued underfunding of libraries as an excuse to sell more of them.
Moreover, when the math is done (the BPL is not being transparent in releasing information about this) the proposed Brooklyn Heights Library sale is likely to net no significant amount of money. It may even result in an actual loss of cash and certainly would if the replacement library were larger and/or more above-ground:
• The sale will gross only $52 million.Again, as with Donnell, if a full-scale replacement library were being built this would be a significant cash loss for the BPL.
• Based on Donnell figures it will cost the BPL over $16 million to build and outfit the much smaller replacement library.
• The BPL won’t estimate the significant cost of moving and reconfiguring space to cram 27,000 square feet of “business and career” functions into Grand Army Plaza where no new square footage will be built to accommodate the functions.
• The BPL will have costs associated with moving to and from and operating in a very small temporary library for the estimated four years of redevelopment construction even though the developer will pick up the rent for the 7,500 square feet there.
• The BPL is spending undisclosed millions on high-priced consultants in connection with these transactions.
Candidate de Blasio said the library should open up its books. Instead, the BPL is embracing non-transparency as its modus operandi in pushing this deal. That’s something, Citizens Defending Libraries has warned the Mr. Adams about. . .
. . . Indeed, BPL minutes show that in 2011 when BPL president Linda Johnson was explaining to her board the need to keep information about the “the real estate plan” in “strict confidence” she reminded the BPL board that the “goal was to get far enough into the plan with this Mayor [Bloomberg] so that when a new Mayor takes office, the plan will be deep in progress and he or she will not derail it.”
A Rushed Sale, The Library Is Being Shrunk Down To Pr-Ordained Size Without a Design For a New Library, Plans or Cost Estimates For Moving Functions Being Shed To Grand Army Plaza Location
The BPL is proceeding with its plans to sell the library and shrink it down to a size the BPL per-ordained without first designing a replacement library. Similarly, the BPL also doesn’t have plans or any cost estimates for what it will do in terms of supposedly “moving” the 27,000 square feet of business and career focus functions from this library to the Grand Army Plaza library. This is a recipe for disaster. It also appears to be a way of obfuscating mistakes, basic errors of judgement and identification of problems with its plans.
Here is just just one major problem with the plan: Stuck in the bottom of a residential luxury tower the shrunken library can never be enlarged afterward as and when this reverse-course shrinkage is recognized as the pathetic or willful mistake it is. The library can also never be enlarged if it is subsequently conceded that it needs to grow because the city, borough, Brooklyn Central Business District, and immediate surrounding neighborhood are all growing at a fast pace, all of which is already immediately, compellingly true.
How large should the library be? The BPL is now proposing to enlarge the Sunset Park Library which is a branch library (on the R line), not a central destination library, to 20,600 square feet, essentially the same size down to which it would now shrink this central destination downtown library.
The Shrinkage And Proposed Sale of the Library Is being Done With Total Obliviousness To The Tradition of Finding Books In The Libraries
The developer's architect was asked to do some conceptual "test fits" of what could go in the library (that didn’t fit), but the architect was totally oblivious to the concept of having books in a library. The architect, Jonathan Marvel, has also attracted considerable attention in the community for being the same one involved in designing Pierhouse and the calculation the resulted in that building being thirty feet above what was specified in a community agreement, so that it blocks the view of the Brooklyn Bridge from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade.
The developer’s architect did admit that when “Charrettes” were held about what the public wanted (excluding, at the BPL’s instruction, the possibility of a bigger library) the public said: “Books, books, books.”
We are speaking of physical books because physical books (actually cheaper) are what the public wants. Circulation is up at the libraries 59% and almost all of that circulation is physical books.
Saint Ann’s, a Private School, Is Getting Big Payday From Public’s Sale and Shrinkage of Library
There is another absolutely startling major part of this story that remains to be flushed out with further investigation and disclosure. The developer has refused to say how much of a payday the private Saint Ann's School is getting from the public's sale and shrinkage of the library. He asserts that this is because it's a “private” transaction, even though it's driving this public one. (Should Saint Ann's be paying the BPL for this benefit?- It doesn’t seem like that is being negotiated by the BPL.) Quite likely, Saint Ann’s may get more money free and clear from this sale than the BPL is netting.
Saint Ann’s gets to make money because it is selling development rights it can’t use without (expensively) tearing down and rebuilding its own building. If the public tears down and rebuilds its library Saint Ann’s can sell its rights through Forest City Ratner.
Relinquishing Public Infrastructure As We Fail To Keep Pace With Private Development?
This sale would sacrifice one more public asset (an education-supporting one at that) to build yet another new, huge residential tower that would further burden the public infrastructure such as the local school, PS8, already at 140% capacity.
Community groups and the CB2 Land Use Committee have called for a halt to further discretionary approvals of additional massive new residential towers like this one, until the PS8 infrastructure problem gets addressed. This is another problem Borough President Adams has foreknowledge of by reason of which he should not approve this subtraction from the public’s assets and infrastructure.
Sale of Public Assets Promoting Gentrification
The ways in which this giveaway of public assets is designed to promote gentrifying displacements, economic and racial segregation are unmistakable. Right now the library is a public asset democratically serving everyone equally, drawing patrons from all over to the borough’s downtown on the border of increasingly elite on Brooklyn Heights. Shutting down the library would result in lower income patrons coming to the neighborhood being, in effect, "disinvited" In the place of a library serving everybody a high-end luxury tower would be built. As a sop to excuse the inexcusable, give the mayor plausible cover to sell public assets cheap, and try to divide the community, a few so-called "affordable" housing units the developer built "poor door" style at a far remove from Brooklyn's burgeoning downtown and upper crust Brooklyn Heights. 114 units would be built altogether, but fully half of those units would essentially be market rate with many units being small units such as studios.
Meanwhile, in another similarly structured sale of public assets de Blasio’s public housing privatization plan would shed 14,000 units of truly affordable public housing from NYCHA’s inventory so, with the few “affordable” units provided off-site, we would not be keeping up, we’d be losing ground in a shell game of public asset defunding where lost ground will create an endless cycle of reasons to sell more public assets.
It looks like the proposed luxury tower would be plus-ultra elite, likely pushing beyond what Brooklyn Heights has experienced before even if the Heights has a history as an enclave where a fair share of wealthy residents have continually resided over the years. The developers web site now says the luxury apartments will “have generous layouts, expansive views of the NYC skyline and include a comprehensive set of amenities as well as underground parking.”
Will the “comprehensive set of amenities” include a yoga room, a sauna, a screening room, two private around-the-building terraces (one above the library) where the public is not permitted? We ask because we are told that the development team promised these amenities on one of its web pages, but then apparently took it down again (something we are trying to confirm) perhaps realizing it was not conducive to the public approval they are seeking for this sell-off of public land.
At the end of last month a New York Times editorial lauded a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that federal housing subsidy funds should not be used (following “the path of least resistance”) to perpetuate segregation even as developers rationalize as “economic redevelopment” building in areas that don't offer minority citizens equal "access to jobs and good schools."
The New York Times concluded: “It’s the duty of the federal and state governments to ensure that affordable housing policies do not make racial isolation worse.”
We think that a sale of valuable public assets like this, even if it conceivably generates `subsidy' for a few housing units, should also not be an agency to exacerbate discrimination and segregation.
48 Hour Information Dump Including Insufficient Environmental Information Before the Public Hearing
The CB2 Land Use Committee hearing on the project, the first ever hearing on the proposed sale and shrinkage of a major public library, was held Wednesday, June 17, 2015. Two days before, on Monday the 15th, the developer prefaced it with an information dump of required documents including what the project would look like and hundreds of pages of insufficient environmental impact statement documents based on decade-out-of-date incorrect assumptions about growth and development in the neighborhood. However insufficient in disclosure and analysis, these documents do talk about the regular closure of streets that provide Brooklyn Bridge access and the extraordinary number of disruptive truck visits that will occur during the anticipated four years of construction to build the luxury tower.
BPL’s Lack of Transparency Should Prelude The Approval It Requests From Eric Adams As Borough President
The lack of transparency on the part of the BPL should itself present an irrefutable reason forMr. Adams to refuse the approval the BPL is requesting. As with Donnell and the Central Library Plan, lack of transparency often goes hand in hand with detriments to, and sell-outs of, the public interest and should be treated as an indicator of such.
Information has been requested of the BPL and the BPL has stonewalled and not furnished that information in response. Much of it is likely required to be furnished under the Freedom of Information Law. More of it, most all of it, is appropriate to furnish under simple precepts essential to maintaining transparency when selling a public asset for conversion like a library for conversion into a luxury condominium tower.
For instance, information should be given about the true and complete costs to the public of selling and shrinking this library as proposed. That includes what it would cost to replace such the asset, including land and development rights, that is being given up. It should include also all the costs of disruptions and what the public must forgo and bear to undergo this transaction. The BPL should also furnish its “strategic real estate plan” that was formulated going back to 2007 and other documents about what plans it has for other libraries.
The members of the BPL board promoting development deals as an agenda for the libraries historically and present overlap with the members of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation who have similarly been cited for their lack of transparency about promoting development in what is refereed to as “Brooklyn Bridge Park” with any unnecessary over-development there thus constituting another form of public asset sell-off.
The Precedent of Eric Adams Decision as Borough President
No such hearings were required when the Donnell Library was suddenly and secretively sold off because, in that case, the library, not the city, owned the land. Because the proposed sell-off of this Downtown Brooklyn Library is closely modeled on, almost identical to, the sale of Donnell Library this is an opportunity for the public to send a clear signal in retrospect that the Donnell sale was also wrong.. Similarly, such a hearing isn't required for the now threatened sale of another major destination library, SIBL, Science, Industry and Business Library at 34th Street. What Brooklyn Borough President Adams decides will likely affect the proposed sale of that Manhattan library too.
It cannot be denied: If approved, this sale sets the unfortunate precedent for serially underfunding and selling off other libraries (per the BPL strategic real estate plan) and other public assets (like public housing) setting a template for how public assets can be picked off one by one. This developer is making hundreds of millions of dollars: The incentives for other such deals will always be there. If we can't stop them at libraries . . . there may be no stopping them at anything all.
Admonition Carved in Stone at the Library
On the library's north wall is an admonition is carved in stone that one should come to the library to seek "TRUTH" not "TREASURE."
Will that admonition be heard?
CONTACT:
Carolyn E. McIntyre, Michael D. D. White
Michael White, 718-834-6184, mddwhite {at aol.com
Carolyn McIntyre, 917-757-6542 cemac62 {at aol.com
Follow us on Twitter: @defendinglibraries
For photos and videos of prior Citizens Defending Libraries rallies opposing the sale, shrinkage, underfunding of New York City libraries, and elimination of books and librarians in the year and a half since its founding, see:
PHOTO GALLERIES- PAST EVENTS
http://citizensdefendinglibraries.blogspot.com/2014/01/photo-galleries-past-events.html
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