Why Is New York City Planning to Sell and Shrink Its Libraries?

Defend our libraries, don't defund them. . . . . fund 'em, don't plunder 'em

Mayor Bloomberg defunded New York libraries at a time of increasing public use, population growth and increased city wealth, shrinking our library system to create real estate deals for wealthy real estate developers at a time of cutbacks in education and escalating disparities in opportunity. It’s an unjust and shortsighted plan that will ultimately hurt New York City’s economy and competitiveness.

It should NOT be adopted by those we have now elected to pursue better policies.

Monday, March 11, 2019

Defending Libraries Testimony To City Council Regarding NYC Library Budget, The Sale of Libraries, Privatization of Libraries, Short Library Hours, And The Elimination of Books

Matthew Zadrożny and Michael D. D. White testifying at City Hall about the destruction and privatization of the libraries
On March 11, 2019 Michael D. D. White of Citizens Defending Libraries and Matthew Zadrożny of the Committee to Save the New York Public Library testified at a New York City Council budget hearing before the council’s library committee presided over by councilman Jimmy Van Bramer.

Mr. Zadrożny’s testimony focused on objections to very shortened hours that the 42nd Street Central Reference Library is now open to researchers and the public (there is a petition), and the relationship of those short hours to the privatizing of that library as it is increasingly used for private gala events of the wealthy.

Mr. White’s testimony focused on the elimination of books and sale and shrinkage of libraries in the system overall. . . . even as designer Karl Lagerfeld had just died with a private library of physical books for his personal use rivaling in size the number of book collections down to which some of the biggest public libraries in New York City are now shrinking.

Councilman Van Bramer said that he was unaware of some of what he was being told in the testimony presented. 

Video of the testimony and Councilman Van Bramer’s reaction is available below.



City Council Hearing March 11 2019- Testimony of Library Defenders (click through to YouTube for best viewing)

Here is an example (a Gotham Gazette article about the hearing) of how such incisive testimony as this doesn’t get covered and the public likely gets a very different message about what is happening from the reporting that is furnished:
Library Presidents Seek Additional Funds at City Council Budget Hearing, March 12, 2019, by Ben Brachfeld.
Here is the text version of the testimony of Michael D. D. White:

March 12, 2019

Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer
Committee on Cultural Affairs,
   Libraries and International Intergroup Relations
Council Chambers
City Hall, New York

Re: March 11, 2019 Testimony respecting Preliminary Budget Hearing - Cultural Affairs, Libraries and International Intergroup Relations-  New York City Council Budget and Oversight Hearings on Fiscal Year 2020 Preliminary Budget, The Preliminary Capital- Plan for Fiscal Years 2020-2023, The Preliminary Ten-Year Capital Strategy for Fiscal Years 2020-2029 and The Fiscal 2019 Preliminary Mayor’s Management Report.
   
Dear City Council Members and Committee on Cultural Affairs, Libraries and International Intergroup Relations:

This letter provides the written version of our Citizens Defending Libraries oral testimony delivered yesterday.

As the New York Times covered in its recent obituary for Karl Lagerfeld,  (Karl Lagerfeld, Designer Who Defined Luxury Fashion, Is Dead), Mr. Lagerfeld had an estimated 300,000 volumes in his personal, private library.  We presented pictures at the hearing that we have up at Citizens Defending Libraries.  Those 300,000 volumes are only a few books shy in number from the number that is being talked about as the number that will be in the reduced Mid-Manhattan Library.
See: Through The Windows of Privilege (Like Karl Lagerfeld’s) The Enduring Value Of Physical Books And Libraries With Big Collections Can Readily Be Discerned               
That’s not the way it should be.  The mid-Manhattan Library was designed to hold 700,000 books.  And now we are talking about it’s being consolidated with SIBL (the 34th Street Science, Industry and Business Library), from which over one million books are missing.  And then it is also supposed to be absorbing all of the hundreds of thousands of books that disappeared from the Donnell Library that was shrunk and sunk to be replaced by a luxury tower.

Mr. Lagerfeld was something of a polymath, but these 300,000 books represent his personal interests, those of just one single man.   The Mid-Manhattan Library, the main circulating library for New York City, should provide books representing the interests of all New Yorkers.

We also presented pictures at the hearing that we have up at Citizens Defending Libraries of the empty shelves at the Flatbush Library.  The pictures were taken the evening that the Brooklyn Public Library trustees held a trustees meeting above these empty shelves, quite oblivious to them and their emptiness, while they held a sort of goofy meeting about how to rearrange furniture in shrunken libraries so that library users wouldn’t notice that the libraries didn’t have enough space.
See:   Atop Empty Bookshelves of The Flatbush Library, Brooklyn Public Library Trustees Meet Displaying Holiday Spirit As They Fuss Over Expensively Tiny Library Space
Earlier at the hearing we heard Brooklyn Public Library president Linda Johnson testify about how the replacement for the Brooklyn Heights Library is going to be a bigger, better configured library.  That’s not true; it’s going to be smaller, 40% of the previous library’s size; it will not be an “Education Library,” not a “Business Library,” not a “Career Library,” not a federal depository library (it was all these things before); it won’t have lots of books like before; and, in terms of configuration, it will be configured as an afterthought (an awkward horseshoe shape) to what the developer wanted for his luxury project.   

Similarly, NYPL COO Iris Weinshall said that the reason to sell the Inwood Library was because of its poor configuration, but when they assembled the developers to bid on the property the library administration officials and city development officials told those developers that configuration of the replacement library didn’t matter.
See: The Voice of an Inwood Library Defender- Jeffrey Wollock Provides an Overview: Libraries as Real Estate -How NYC's Libraries are Being Stolen
So what you are told is not true, and we are eliminating books and living in a world where people like Karl Lagerfeld, who have the privilege to own what is valuable, own more books than we are furnishing the citizens of New York City in our public libraries.

Please not as well that Citizens Defending Libraries endorses and supports the testimony of Matthew Zadrozny of the Committee to Save The New York Public Library objecting to the NYPL’s very contracted for the 42nd Street Central Referenced Library and how keeping those shortened hours in order to hold private gala events at the library represents a highly inappropriate privatization of that public asset intended to serve the public.

For more about the disappearance of books from our New York City public libraries see the section of information about it on our Citizens Defending Libraries main page:
How Many Books Are Disappearing From New York City Libraries?     
Sincerely,
       
Michael D. D. White
Citizens Defending Libraries   

Mr. White presented these visuals during his testimony of the many books in Karl Lagerfeld's library and of the empty shelves ignored by the oblivious BPL trustees visiting the Flatbush Library:





Here is the text version of the testimony of Matthew Zadrożny:
   
Committee on Cultural Affairs, Libraries and International Intergroup Relations

City Council of New York City

March 11, 2019

Chairman Van Bramer, Councilmember Borelli, Councilmember Cumbo, Councilmember Koslowitz, Councilmember Moya, thank you for holding this hearing.

My name is Matthew Zadrozny. I am a data scientist and a member of the Committee to Save the New York Public Library, also known as, SaveNYPL.org. I've used the NYPL for 25 years, as a student, freelancer, and recently to research NYC history. I donate money to NYPL through its Young Lions program and attend board meetings as a member of the public.

Earlier today you heard Tony Marx, NYPL's president, request additional funds for longer hours. I support this. But there's more to the story.

The leadership of NYPL wants longer hours for the branch libraries. However, they have resisted longer hours at NYPL's Central Research Library at 42nd & 5th Avenue. For sixty years after its founding, the main library was open around 87 hours per week. Now it is open only 56 hours. Most days, today included, the main library closes at 6pm — before working New Yorkers can get there. On Sundays, the library is only open for four hours. And last summer it was closed on Sundays.

Historically, longer, later hours allowed New Yorkers to come after work and stay till 9 or 10 in the evening, researching, studying, and bettering their lives. NYPL reduced hours in the 70s due to a budget crisis. Now the library's endowment is at a record high of more than $1 billion. The obstacle is not money but leadership's addiction to corporate events and weddings.

SaveNYPL has been protesting this. We want NYPL to give priority to the public and readers, not parties and rentals. We have collected some 2,000 signatures from New Yorkers who need the main library to be open late. These include high school kids, college students, researchers, writers, and freelancers — people who are the engine of NYC's economy and culture.

Over the library entrance are the words: "The City of New York has erected this building for the free use of all the people." The 42nd street building is owned by the City of New York and it belongs to all New Yorkers. It is the greatest publicly accessible research library in the world. Closing the library for private events during prime time is de facto privatization and unbecoming of a great city.

What is more important: Cocktail parties for the connected? Or a quiet space for students, scholars, startup founders, and job seekers?

The City Council should tell NYPL's leadership that the best way to help the public is not through expensive and unnecessary capital projects. Instead, keep the central library, and all libraries, open longer. Serve readers, not cocktails!

Friday, March 8, 2019

Through The Windows of Privilege (Like Karl Lagerfeld’s) The Enduring Value Of Physical Books And Libraries With Big Collections Can Readily Be Discerned

Lagerfeld loved to pose and have pictures taken of his library that appeared in many, many, many, many, many, many  promotional stories.  Take a peek: Can you spot the two-volume set related to a semi-obscure poet who lived in the south of France?
After renowned and prolific fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld died in Paris, Tuesday, February 19th there was so much written about him, and there were commemorative full page tributes paid for in the New York Times by Chanel one of the fashion houses he most famously deigned for.  For us, one of the most fascinating descriptions about the man published was in the New York Times obituary (Karl Lagerfeld, Designer Who Defined Luxury Fashion, Is Dead), which commented that “he estimated his library at 300,000 volumes.”

Confirming that Lagerfeld loved and valued his books, we can relate that three of the volumes in Lagerfeld’s collection were given to him by the mother of Citizens Defending Libraries co-founder Michael D. D. White who worked for Chanel when Lagerfeld was designing for that fashion house.  Two of those books were a two-volume set that Lagerfeld wanted (and couldn’t find) because of his interest in a semi-obscure poet who lived in the south of France.  Lagerfeld took the time to personally extend his thanks when the book was given to him.

Lagerfeld “estimated his library at 300,000 volumes”!   That library of volumes personally collected by just one privileged individual is almost equal in size to the 400,000 volumes that the  NYPL sometimes talks about the new downsized version of its Mid-Manhattan Library holding. Mid-Manhattan (now to be rechristened “SNFL,” the “Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library”) was designed to hold far more books than that, 700,000 books.  That downsized 400,000 number at the NYPL’s largest circulating library in New York City is what is supposed to represent, after a consolidating shrinkage, all the volumes that were also in SIBL, the Science, Industry and Business Library from which more than a million books have gone missing, and another 175,000 books from just one of Donnell’s collection when that central destination library was shut down.  Moreover, the NYPL’s architects for the shrunken Mid-Manhattan Library have represented repeatedly, including assurances to the NYPL trustees that the shelves meant to hold the 400,000 books can always be removed is the collection is shrunk still further.

This shrinkage of physical books in the NYPL’s libraries is occurring when circulation, mostly physical books is way up, nearly 70%, and the public still prefers physical books rather than the (more expensive) digital books that library administration officials are pushing at them.

We have supplied information about how with huge and overwhelming percentages of our countries population agreeing quite sensibly about what they want (and could and ought to be able to have), elected officials representing corporate and monied interests are not delivering those things.  Tim Wu wrote an op-ed that appeared the New York Times Wednesday offering up the same stark observation about the thwarting of democracy (See: The Oppression of the Supermajority-  The defining political fact of our time is not polarization. It’s the thwarting of a largely unified public.)

What’s happening in New York with the real estate deals dismantling libraries and the elimination of books is another prime example of the way the public is not getting what is a top priority for a huge majority of citizens even though what the public wants is entirely affordable and makes sense, especially as a public commons . . .

. . . The other side to this is to see, via the expression of of privileges of wealth and rank in our society, how those in a position to make their own personal choices (like Lagerfeld) value books and their own private libraries.  So, for instance, the NYPK sold the Donnell Library in a book-eliminating shrink-and-sink deal that netted the NYPL perhaps less than $23 million for the for the drastic shrinkage of what was once a beloved five-story, 97,000 square foot central destination library . . . The double page color advertisements in the New York Times advertising the luxury condos featured the penthouse apartment on the market for $60 million.  In the color advertisement you looked through the windows of the penthouse condo to be allured by the private library therein. 

Adding to the embarrassing contrast, that penthouse apartment devotes a far, far higher percentage of its floor space to luxury owner’s private library as a amenity than New York City devotes in its budget to public libraries as a shared resource serving all New Yorkers.  See- What’s Wrong With These Numbers?: The Baccarat Tower’s $60M Penthouse and NYC’s Library Budget, April 29, 2014.
Real Estate News: Even While Sacrificing NYC PUBLIC Libraries To Create Real Estate Transactions, Developers Use The Creation of PRIVATE Libraries To Promote Their Projects.
Similarly, we have written about how developers apparently are adding private libraries to their their developments as selling points to market them better.  See: Real Estate News: Even While Sacrificing NYC PUBLIC Libraries To Create Real Estate Transactions, Developers Use The Creation of PRIVATE Libraries To Promote Their Projects.

The Brooklyn Heights Association, which once fought for a bigger and better Business, Career and Education central library in Brooklyn Heights reversed course to side with the development community coming out in favor of selling that library in a development deal that generated a windfall for the Private Saint Ann’s School.  Until just recently the Brooklyn Heights Association raised money with neighborhood house tours that afforded the public tantalizing views of the select interiors of many of the magnificent homes in the neighborhood. One of the most spectacular hits on the BHA house tour the year before the BHA started promoting the sale and shrinkage of the local public library was a was a townhouse equipped with its own two-story private library customized with magnificently detailed yellow-green wood bookshelves . . .  (In retrospect we can only wonder whether it was the home of a Saint Ann’s school family.)

The architect hired by the developer and Brooklyn Public Library for designs respecting the shrink-and-sink deal selling of that Brooklyn Heights Library in downtown Brooklyn Marvel Architects headed by Jonathan Marvel.  The firm refused to produce numbers describing the number fo books being eliminated from the libraries by its redesigns.  However, when the firm needed some good PR to counter the negative news about its involvement with the library sell-off and the shady calculations that resulted in the oversized Pierhouse impairing the view from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, the New York Times obliged with a Matt Chaban authored puff piece that generated some of its warm and fuzzies plus gave the architect’s cred by posing Jonathan Marvel and his father in front the shelves holding their library of architectures books. . . many of those books are likely to be hard, if not impossible to find, in a New York Public library.  See: It’s Marvelous To Have Books!- Indeed, But Architect Jonathan Marvel Designs a Library Seemingly Oblivious To The Tradition of Finding Books In The Library.

It endears Karl Lagerfeld to us that he so loved books.  No doubt his easily accessible library contributed heartily to his wide ranging productiveness.  We’d love to love everyone who loves books, and when you peer through the windows afforded when the privileged make the choices that they are free to make, it is clear that there are many who love and value their books.  It’s just that we’d like it if all those who have such privilege to have their own libraries would also love for the rest of us to have books in our public libraries of New York.  Please.  Please.

Some other tidbits about Mr. Lagerfeld and books.  To accommodate his growing library, Lagerfeld planned a facility underneath the tennis court at his house in Biarritz the centerpiece of which was a 10,000-square-foot, 20-foot high library space.  And Mr. Lagerfeld ran "his own bookstore, 7L, on the Rue Lille in Paris."

One last surprise, while New York library officials take pot shots at "dusty" physical books (calling them "analogue books" and "artifactual originals," while they speak dismissively about old time" versions of libraries that are not "twenty-first century" "Libraries of the future"), Mr. Lagerfeld perceived the world differently– Rumors came true, and Mr. Lagerfeld, who one must think of as quite intimately linked to the renowned fragrances of Chanel, helped produce a new perfume based on a loving evocation of the scent of books.  It was named  “Paper Passion.”

Saturday, March 2, 2019

The (Ugh) Upshot After Brooklyn Public Library President Linda Johnson Shacks Up With Bruce Ratner?: The BPL Will Hold Gala On May 22nd Honoring The Ratner Barclays Center And Nets!


Do we think, under the circumstances of a certain `coupling,' that the BPL's "Ball For Brooklyn" Gala site where the library honors Bruce Ratner's arena is just a little cartoonish in its absurdity?  We took a try at making it more so.

Ugh, Ugh and double-ugh!  It’s ugly indeed! . . .

No, you can’t make this stuff up!: It’s really just days, barely a few weeks since we reported about how Bruce Ratner and Brooklyn Public Library President Linda Johnson were shacking up (See: It Gets Personal, But This Gossip Is, In Fact, Real News About The Business of Selling Libraries- Two From That Constellation of Library-Selling Stars Hook Up As A Couple: Bruce Ratner and Brooklyn Library President Linda Johnson– Guess Where?).

When we passed on the news from the real estate industry reporting website The Real Deal we noted that the shacking-up shack was the view-impairing Pierhouse development in Brooklyn Bridge Park at 130 Furman Street. . .  

And that then let us go on to explicate with an extensive eight (count ‘em, eight) bullet points connecting all sorts of dots with respect to how the nesting together of these two real estate minded adversaries of our libraries related in so many ways to the selling off of our libraries and the abuse of our library system and public assets. . .

. . . It’s a real estate story, a library selling story, and it’s an Atlantic Yards (Pacific Park) story, and . . .

. . .  OMG, it didn’t take long, but we’ll now have to lengthen our dot-connecting bullet point list item with another significant connection!  Consider for yourself if this one is just too embarrassing to be believed?. . .

At Tuesday’s February 26th Brooklyn Public Library Trustees meeting as BPL president Linda Johnson smiled at her board, NYPL trustee Michael Liburd* told his assembled fellows that on Wednesday, May 22nd the BPL would hold its annual fund-raising gala at the Bruce Ratner developed Barclays Center and that “one of the reasons” for locating the gala at the Barclays Center “is that we are honoring the Barclays Center and the Brooklyn Nets.”  Liburd’s mention of the gala being held at the Barclays Center was greeted with some outbursts of delighted laughter.   Then someone at the table jumped in to call attention to the cleverness of how this library fundraiser was named the “Ball for Brooklyn” with the emphasis on the Ball.” . . . Yes, indeed that’s exactly how the gala is being promoted–  Top of the list before and mention of cocktails or dinner is “Honoring: Barclays Center & Brooklyn Nets.”

Isn't that a nice gift for BPL prez Linda Johnson to be giving her boyfriend Bruce?
(* Liburd has pushed real estate development as head of Community Board 9's Land Use Committee.)
Joining the club to attend the “Gala” is apt to cause nose bleeds: With “limited Availability” the BPL is posting some pricey positions for attendees to opt into: “Lead Sponsorship” at $100,000, “Principal Sponsorship” at $500,000, “Visionary Sponsorship” at $25,000, “Contributor Sponsorship” at $10,000.  Liburd said that working with the CEO of the Barclays Center there was motivation for the Ratner/Prokhorov Center to make the event “even more financially successful than previously.”  And do contributors get special consideration if afterwards they want to “bid” on libraries that go up for sale?

Liburd waived a page of names distributed to the trustees asking them to hit up a bunch of monied so-and-sos for gala contributions.  The list included thirteen designated individuals targeted from the Blackstone Charitable Foundation.”  Of course when it comes to libraries and turning them into real estate deals the name of Stephen A. Schwarzman’s “Blackstone” is already exceedingly familiar.    
Conferring Awards to Rewrite History -or- Rewriting History to Confer Awards– How Taking Over Certain Organizations Factors In (And Affect The Course of Future Events)

This is not the first BPL “partnering” to promote the Forest City Ratner brand, including the Nets and Barclays.  Our previously provided bullet point list already mentioned the BPL veering into such promotions for Ratner–  it was, in fact, one of the first things thought of when the BPL and Linda Johnson were thinking about as examples of the kind of private “partnering” the BPL could do.  The library, as the BPL trustees are aware, has a strong brand that somewhat automatically enlists public approval.  With partnering some of that approval can be expected to `rub off’. . . in both senses of that phrase.

As for “awards” and “honoring,” this is also not the first time that what should be a public commons asset like the library has been commandeered to lend the Ratner organization a faux burnishing of its reputation that it does not deserve.

In April of 2008, a problematically comprised and compromised Brooklyn Museum board of trustees taking Ratner money led straight to, as reported in Norman Oder’s Atlantic Yards Report:
A protest organized by Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn in response to the Brooklyn Museum's honoring of Bruce Ratner draws an angry (and creative) crowd, with chants of "Shame on you" and signs like "Dung Deal." Borough President Marty Markowitz's wife Jamie takes a few too many pieces of swag. Deputy Mayor Patricia Harris [who was also in change of the launch of the Bloomberg’s initiation of efforts to turn libraries into rel estate], a key advisor to Mayor Mike Bloomberg on charitable issues, is also present, a sign--as became clearer during the mayor's effort to override term limits--of the intertwining of charity and politics.
The Brooklyn Museum board acted to “honor” Ratner just as essential city approvals hung in the balance for Ratner’s huge Atlantic Yards mega-monopoly project of which the Barclays Center was a conspicuous part.  No doubt it was hoped that the “honoring” would help push the mega-project through over community objection (and even get it more taxpayer subsidy) despite what was then the increasingly bad reputation of the mega-project.   

One for instance of how badly regarded the Ratner megadevelopment was as it lumbered toward its eventual first groundbreaking was Kent Barwick, president of the Municipal Arts Society, calling the development “the poster child for what goes wrong when process is ignored. . . a poorly designed project that has polarized the community and that squanders both opportunity and public trust.”
But criticism like that can be naturalized if you commandeer the criticizer.

As Citizens Defending Libraries co-founder Michael D. D. White wrote in Noticing New York
The Municipal Art Society was once thought of as representing the public and standing up to developers in the face of abusive development.  . . .   Not so long ago, MAS had scores of forums about development in the city invoking the name and principles of Jane Jacobs in which, while the moderators kept civil order, the Atlantic Yards mega-monopoly was excoriated by expert panelists and attending public alike, for a zillion villainous transgressions against the public interest.
  
More recently, after an orchestrated reconstituting of the board, essentially, as it was disclosed to me, happening as something of a coup, MAS has reversed itself to the extent that many no longer regard it as representing the public.  This new version of MAS has given not one, but two, awards the to the Atlantic Yards mega-development, essentially praising Forest City Ratner for the kind of neighborhood destruction that was previously decried, an absurdity that’s siren for satire, essentially an award for “preserving a swath of Prospect Heights by tearing it down to build the Ratner Prokhorov Barclays arena while letting the rest of the destroyed neighborhood acreage lie fallow for a few decades.”   (See: Monday, June 16, 2014, Ratner, Gilmartin & the MAS Onassis Medal: selective memory, glitzy gala, and enduring dismay.)
(See: Is Forest City Ratner, As Victor, Writing Our History?- WNYC's Press Release on Appointing Forest City Ratner's MaryAnne Gilmartin to Its Board of Trustees, November 16, 2014,)

White, wrote there about how MAS events now reportedly can degenerate to “almost unbelievably depressing pro-development spectacle.”  Indeed, more recently, in another Noticing New York article, White wrote about MAS gathering unsuspecting listeners to hear Linda Johnson extol her vision of turning libraries into real estate deals in a supportive, noncritical environment.  See:  Municipal Art Society, Once Venerable, Becomes Platform For Disseminating Misinformation Promoting Development, In this Case Backing Library Sales and Shrinkage, June 15, 2015.
   
Norman Oder, who has written voluminously and extensively focusing on Atlantic Yards (renamed Pacific Park as a probable ruse to escape its history of criticism) has, after assiduous study, boiled things down to a synthesis that Atlantic Yards has always relied upon a “culture of cheating.”   One of the supreme cheats the cheater can employ is to rewrite history. 

At the 2008 demonstration outside the Brooklyn Museum when the Museum was “honoring” Bruce Ratner, protesters were sharing and Michael D. D. White was reading quotes through the ages about `honor’ such as Thomas Jefferson’s “Nobody can acquire honor by doing what is wrong.”  Real “honor” certainly cannot be acquired that way, but the wind that blows against that quote are the many variations of quotes about how “history is written by the victors,” which means that the verisimilitude of honor can be acquired that way, or to use a quote often attributed to Napoleon, “history is a pack of lies agreed upon” that can confer such verisimilitude.
  
Winston Churchill (“Winnie” to a Brit we know who remembers him from living through the WWII era), albeit, definitely had his commendable achievements. However, Churchill said that “history will be kind to me because I intend to write it.”  Indeed, because he actually did write it (with very appreciable help from the British taxpayers), and in the process his ruthless past apparently got quite forgotten.

When White was writing about the about face of the Atlantic Yards critique that occurred when the MAS board was taken over partly for that purpose, he was also writing about how radio station WNYC issued a history-falsifying press release when appointing Forest City Ratner  Chief Executive Officer MaryAnne Gilmartin to its board of trustees.  It was an inappropriate thing for WNYC to do. WNYC is another public commons and public trust that should be serving the public.

The Brooklyn Museum, The Municipal Art Society, The WNYC Public Radio Station, The Brooklyn Public Library: These are all organizations that are supposed to be serving the public with the goal of being a conduit of information free of their own manufactured bias.  We think of our libraries of repositories where we safely entrust with all our history.  Whatever the reason, personal relationship between BPL president Linda Johnson and Bruce Ratner, or not, it is frightening when the library is an organization enlisted to rewrite history.  Furthermore, the BPL’s obsession with being in the thrall of huge private contributions from those with conflicts of interest is likewise scary in a compounding way.

The effect of rewriting history?  “Whoever controls the past controls the future,” wrote George Orwell in “1984.”  It’s similar to another quote that’s various attributed to ancient the ancient and wise: “Those who tell the stories also rule the society.”  Or, if we adapt the words of George Santayana: Those who are able to rewrite history so that we forget the past can condemn us to suffer the repetition of their misdeeds.

As for those who would like a crack at repeating their misdeeds, the urgency of seizing the pen to rewrite history is directly related to how unflattering a truthful telling of history is.  As the BPL seeks to confer its `honors,’ there is, another story, a very different narrative to be related.  The so-called `success’ of the Barclays Center is highly disputable as far the arena itself is concerned, and Atlantic Yards (aka “Pacific Park”) of which that arena is an integral part is also a continuing embarrassment in multiple ways.

Intimately familiar with its myriad details, journalist Neil deMause has, with reasons he lays out, called the arena an epic train wreck.”  The bonds issued to finance the Barclays Center (even after a refinancing to reduce financial stress) are not doing well becoming “nearly junk”: The rating agencies have been threatening to lower their ratings (“just barely within `investment grade’ and above junk, but with a negative outlook, indicating that the rating was unstable.)  The original overall project presentations touted a ten-year course to completion in 2003, but quite recently it’s been admitted that it may take till 2035 to complete it even while questions are being deflected about whether it will take even longer than that.  In 2009 and Marisa Lago, then head of the state’s ESDC agency overseeing the project indicated it could take “decades” or 40 years to complete.

Meanwhile, the mega-monopoly mega-project has suffered extremely embarrassing and delaying cost overruns getting it into litigation.  The promise of the so-called affordable units has turned out to be deceptive and those units will be extra long in coming.  Another of the highly touted reasons for giving the project to Ratner was to close the gash and knit the neighborhood streets back together by building over the open pit rail yards at that location– But addressing that goal, which should have been a priority, will now be postponed until the tail end to be done only when the project is finally reaching its finish line.  For this mess of pottage other recently developed buildings and what was more truly affordable existing housing (not over the rail yard) were torn down and developers competing with Ratner were chased away and shut out. 

Simultaneously At The NYPL “Billionaire Graffiti.”

While the BPL is lending its we-are-a-library halo to supply a good reputation to Linda Johnson’s boyfriend’s project, the NYPL is similarly willing to invert things and put its own we-are-a-library halo to work to improve the reputation of two of the main people, trustees on its board, Stephen A. Shwarzman and Marshall Rose, associated with the library-shrinking, library-selling, book-eliminating Central Library Plan.   The NYPL had to officially abandon the reviled plan, but the latest set of alterations at the 42nd Street Central Reference Library involve putting the name of Stephen A. Schwarzman, the piratical plutocrat on the library building in yet one more place.  This is the man who, aside from driving library plundering plans ahead has said the poor should pay more taxes and the loopholes that allow him to pay especially low taxes compared to the rest of us need to be protected.  Along with this, an outdoor plaza will suffer an ostentatious bedecking with the name of real estate mogul Marshall Rose.  People are calling it “Billionaire Graffiti.”

Entrusting Our History And Narratives To The Current Library Administration Officials And Boards

Other things happened at the BPL trustees meeting.  It was announced that rather than just be repository of books and content, the BPL is going into content production; it will start creating its own podcasts (“Borrowed”).   What stories will ultimately be told as the content is generated by administrators and trustees eager to “honor” Mr. Ratner?  At a recent NYPL meeting the NYPL trustees were told that they too would be going into content production by partnering with HBO.
               
Ms. Johnson made it a point to mention and promote to the trustees Eric Klinenberg’s recent book “Palaces for the People,” which according to the acknowledgments in Mr. Klinenberg was created by him after he was approached by the Revson Foundation which has funded all sorts of initiatives in connection with promoting the sale of libraries.  And the Revson Foundation works closely with those at the library like Ms. Johnson so one could think of this as another example of the BPL getting involved with content production. Ms. Johnson advised the trustees that the first chapter of Klinenberg’s book was about the New Lots Avenue Library (665 New Lots Ave. at Barbey St), which she advised them was being targeted for a `complete branch renovation’ because it is in the “worst shape” of any library in the system needing one.  We will have to be alert for what is in store for the library.

The BPL trustees are also, it turns out, working at their level on directing people about what they should read.  Coming back to our collection of connect-the-dots bullet points when we first found out that Linda Johnson and Bruce Ratner were shacking up together, BPL trustee Hank Gutman was at the meeting.  Gutman, like Johnson and Ratner also (under somewhat scandalous circumstances) also has an apartment in the view-impairing Pierhouse development in Brooklyn Bridge Park at 130 Furman Street.  Gutman is the head of the BPL’s new “Digital Strategy Committee.”  (It includes members besides the trustees.)  Gutman said that one of the things the committee was working on in terms of new digital technology was to refer library users to books “they should be reading” (including “books they are perhaps unaware of”), but he said it would be done in by “privacy respecting, non-intrusive means.”  Gutman said that almost the entirety of the committee’s last meeting was spent talking about the nudge project, which he said was directed to encouraging people in a more friendly way to return books to the library.

Do we want a man like Gutman working on digital technology that steers what gets read when people come into their libraries?  Part of the connect-the-dots the dots bullet points is that Gutman not only lives in the same Brooklyn Bridge Park building as Ratner and Johnson, but that he is also on the board of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation and that there is a weird amount of overlap between the BPL board and the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation board.  Thus Gutman winds up pushing development by selling off libraries by being on the BPL board as well as pushing development in Brooklyn Bridge Park by being on that board.

Tuesday morning, the day of trustees meeting, was also the day of a ribbon cutting for one of the housing developments in Brooklyn Bridge Park.  Before the meeting Gutman, with a certain amount of haughty disdain, carefully explained to one of the BPL employees why the community should not have been opposing development in the park.  He said that his Brooklyn Heights neighbors were opposing the development in Brooklyn Bridge Park because it involved “low income” units and that his neighbors didn’t want to live with such people of a different class.  It was probably true that, if you searched, you might have been able to find some upper class Brooklyn Heights residents who didn’t want to see lower income subsidized units in the neighborhood, but Gutman’s was hardly, we believe, an accurate overall representation of why more development in the park has been widely opposed by the community.  Gutman’s tended explanation is probably better thought of as another eager try at rewriting of history.  Should we trust Mr. Gutman to steer library users to the books they “should read”?

Gutman favored the sale of the BPL’s Business, Career and Education Library, a central destination and federal depository library in Brooklyn’s downtown center that was the BPL’s second biggest library, newly renovated, expanded and completely upgraded.  It was a shrink-and-sink deal, jettisoning books and eliminating most of the library’s previous functions.  The luxury tower at the site replacing the library is now taller than all the neighboring buildings.  (It’s tall enough to be seen now from the Grand Army Plaza central library where the trustees were meeting.) Linda Johnson told her board of the trustees that they were still working on* the design for the much smaller, more underground, much more bookless library that is to be in the luxury tower.  She said that as they did so they also wanted to please those who had an “old time version” of what a library should be.

 A new, very big investment for the BPL, a $650,000 media buy to “change the way that people think about BPL.” _picture we took of the presentation at the meeting,
More about how people should think of libraries?–  also big news from the meeting: In a new initiative, the BPL will be launching a $650,000 high profile media buy to sell the BPL brand with the number one purpose to “change the way that people think about BPL.”
(* The question has always been how much of an afterthought to the developer’s plans the “replacement” library will be.  The library space is already configured as an awkward horseshoe shape around space the developer is preemptively devoting to the luxury tower’s use. Another library space in a luxury tower that is turning out to be very much an afterthought about what is supposed to go into a luxury tower is the library space along with “arts space” that is supposed to go into the Walentas, Two Trees development Ashland Place tower “Southside project” near the Brooklyn Academy of Music where the space is not being delivered because the city– and the library– don’t know what the deal is that they cut with the building’s developer when it acquired the land and the developer got special exemptions and approvals to build bigger based on providing library and cultural space within the building.  The whole thing was already a scandal because the developer when “bidding” was actually supposed to be getting from the Bloomberg administration the ability to build a parking garage, not a luxury tower.  That changed and then, further along the way a deal was altered again for a bigger building with more luxury apartments if 15,000 square feet was provided for libraries. More recently, BPL spokesperson David Walloch said there was only going to be 1,500 square feet of library space.  What is not stalled?: The Whole Foods and the Apple Store have already opened in the building.

At the trustees meeting the problems with the non-delivery of space were mentioned and the trustees were told that the BPL would “just wait around till that gets resolved.”  BPL trustee Jordan Barowitz from the Durst Development organization who heads the capital projects committee in charge of the BPL’s real estate development said the project was “on hold” while the city and the developer “resolved their differences.”  He said he didn’t know “exactly what the differences were,” but “it was not surprising” there was a difference between the city and developer.  Any guesses whether the Walentases will come to the May 22nd the "Brooklyn Ball" gala honoring the Ratner arena?)
(Addendum: What to know what the previous BPL Trustees meeting in December was like?– It too taunted ironic response in a spectacular way.  See: Atop Empty Bookshelves of The Flatbush Library, Brooklyn Public Library Trustees Meet Displaying Holiday Spirit As They Fuss Over Expensively Tiny Library Space.)