Our Testimony To Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams About Proposal To Turn Sunset Park Library Into Another No-bid Real Estate Deal

This is Citizens Defending Libraries testimony submitted to Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams today about the proposal to turn the Sunset Park Library into another no-bid real estate deal.

* * * *

November 14, 2016

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams
Brooklyn Borough Hall
209 Joralemon Street
Brooklyn, New York 11201


Re:    Proposal to turn Sunset Park Library into another no-bid real estate deal

Dear Borough President Adams:

Since when do we have to turn our libraries into real estate projects serving real estate priorities, clandestinely conceived and managed ones at that?

Citizens Defending Libraries would like to think that since it shone a light and let the community know about the long-secret plans to turn the Sunset Park Library into a multi-use real estate project, that what was proposed became a better project in response.  Indeed, it is a bigger library, now proposed to be essentially the same size as what the shrink-and-sink disposal of the Brooklyn Heights Library, Brooklyn’s heretofore second biggest library, will produce.

But approving this project is feeding the beast that ravages us and it is doubtful that this is what the community wants.  At the Community Board 7 Land Use Committee hearing testimonies were so relentlessly supplied by people with economic and employment relationships with the developer and the BPL (now itself styled as a development agency) that the hearing officer cautioned that these individuals should all preface their remarks by noting their conflicts of interest.  As more and more “testimony” was given by people with such conflicts, FAC employees, board members and the like, they were told that they COULD testify, but the moderator suggested that they should refrain because they drowning out the community and usurping the limited about of time available to speak.  Still, more and more FAC trustees, employees and BPL employees spoke.

The BPL suggested at one point that they didn’t think that people coming from outside the community should speak, and, in fact, virtually no one from outside the Sunset Park Community spoke except that the majority of these economically interested, salaried speakers were exactly that: From outside the community.

It was the same with hearings, including those held right here last year, when the Brooklyn Heights shrink-and-sink scam was proposed.  The Fifth Avenue Committee similarly marched out its economically interested troops to testify that Brooklyn’s second biggest library should be sold to net a minuscule fraction of its value to the public, handed off to a luxury tower developer in a pay-to-play de Blasio deal that we all understand is now under criminal investigation.  Thus, with this deal, and the Brooklyn Heights deal, we see a perpetuation of the bottom line no-bid hand-offs that began with the Donnell shrink-and-sink deal involving Donald Trump’s son-in-law and principal advisor, Jared Kushner, as a principal beneficiary.

Why is the NYC Economic Development Corporation (EDC) along with other real estate and interests adverse to those of the public interests allowed such influence and sway over the BPL and its board?  Why is  Jamie Torres Springer, a real estate-company-employed spouse of the head of the EDC, allowed to be the head of the board of the Fifth Avenue Committee, the developer here, helping to push so many library sales?

It is all too incestuous, far too conflicted and way too much against the public interest.

The Sunset Park Library deal was conceived in secret, arriving full-blown without community or public input, and has been rammed down the public’s throat.  It is a subtraction from what the public owns, a significant subtraction, from the assets of the library system.  The proposed replacement library, stuck underneath a privately-owned residential building can never grow in the future.  That would not be so if the proposal were instead to build a  publicly-owned, public purpose office building.

And the larger library that Sunset Park might get if this clandestinely conceived deal is approved?  That depends on promises the BPL and developer cannot be trusted to keep!

In the course of the ULURP process for the Brooklyn Heights Library sale (that went on here) it was promised that the Heights library would not be shut and moved to a smaller, less adequate temporary library until the developer had closed on the transaction, ponied up the money the BPL says (at least pretextually) is the reason it is destroying the library.  That promise was not kept.

The BPL promised that the library would never suffer demolition until the public was thoroughly protected against loss and the possibility of the replacement library not being built.  That promise is not being kept either.  The developer is being allowed to trash and demolish the library while it is still publicly owned public property.  The developer with the deal under criminal investigation is being allowed to rush, once again damning the best interests of the public. The BPL doesn’t expect the developer to acquire the property for another two months. .  if even that happens.

Because the BPL says what it will do with Sunset Park is dependent upon the Heights deal, those broken promises also directly affect the Sunset Park Library proposal now being considered.

And while we ask about the secrecy with which this and other library deals were conceived and pursued and whether that secrecy should be tolerated, we should also ask why one of the country’s top private spy agencies like Booz Allen Hamilton, working almost exclusively for the federal government, should have been engaged to be so intricately involved in the overhaul of New York City Libraries and their destruction. . .

. . .  Our libraries are supposed to be a public commons, a zone of free speech and freedom of thought and concomitantly a zone with protected privacies.  They are not supposed to be a playground for developers or at the disposal of anyone else.

Sincerely,

Michael D. D. White
Co-founder,
Citizens Defending Libraries

Scruffing Things Up As Fast As Possible, De Blasio’s Pay-To-Play Developer Starts Trashing Brooklyn’s Still Publicly Owned Second Largest Library

This week on Wednesday, David Karmer’s Hudson Company sent a crew of men out to start trashing the still publicly owned Brooklyn Heights Library.

This very important destination library is still city-owned.  It’s Brooklyn second biggest and with the substantial enlargement and full upgrading it got in 1993 it is one of the most technologically advanced and up-to-date libraries in terms of supporting computers and modern technology.

Why would the de Blasio allow his pay-to-play developer, apparently granting the developer a license, to come in and start wrecking, scuffing up and trashing a still publicly owned building?  Bear in mind that allowing this wreckage before the developer has closed on or acquired rights to the property violates the oft touted promises of Mr. de Blasio and his representatives and people like Councilman Steve Levin that the library and its public property would suffer no destruction until a full set of protections was put in place to ensure that the luxury condo and the teeny replacement library (a much more underground library) would be built.

Here are some thoughts on why this is occurring now.

    1.    De Blasio, the developer and the BPL board and honchos don’t want a pristine and perfect piece of public property sitting grandly and obviously unused on Tuesday, November 8th the day that people are supposed to go out to vote for Hillary Clinton (not Trump, Jill Stein or Gary Johnson according to de Blasio).  The library’s public auditorium has been a key neighborhood polling spot for sometime.  With its doors sealed there isn’t currently an adequate replacement which has caused considerable public complaint about the failure to use this obviously still available valuable public asset.  You don’t want people going to the polls in November more angry than they have to be.  And Hillary surely doesn’t want Democrats showing up angry or not showing up at out of disgust or discouragement–   This library is, after all, given the intersection of the streets where it is located, the “Tillary Clinton Library.”  It is, furthermore, immediately adjacent to the Forest City Ratner owned building where Hillary has her national campaign headquarters.  The building is even, for development purposes, part of the same real estate development parcel as Hillary’s headquarters thus constituting Hillary’s Forest City Ratner landlord a gatekeeper to the library sale, shrink and sink transaction.  Notwithstanding, Hillary did not answer our calls to come forth and oppose this privatization of public assets that was laying at her doorstep. – It is important to note that while Hillary can be scolded for how this library sale lays uncriticized by her at her very doorstep, Trump has much the same problem: The shrink-and-sink sale of the Brooklyn Heights Library was modeled on the shrink-and-sink sale of the Donnell Library (there was an overlap of the people behind both) and one of the principal financial beneficiaries of the sale of Donnell for a pittance was Jered Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and top campaign advisor.

    2.    Via the symbolism attendant with a cavalier degradation of the still publicly owned library, the city wants to help the Hudson Companies prove to banks and those from whom the developer is seeking financing and guarantees that the developer isn’t afraid of the investigations into his deal, including the criminal pay-to-play investigation by Preet Bharara’s US Attorney’s office.   The impunity with which the developer hopes to vandalize the library before he owns it is like a thumb in the eye of the investigators to proclaim that he doesn’t fear them or being held financially responsible for the astronomical losses that will be engendered for the public when he proceeds.  It’s a risky ploy.  The developer is not a good faith purchaser for value of this property and the world is adequately on notice so that the developer and the property can be directly proceeded against resulting in substantial losses sustained by those who do business with him on this property.

    3.    As an extension of number 2 above, the developer wants, with a toe-in-the-water or camels-nose-under-the-tent, to show that no one is going to stop him even as promises are not kept.  While he may not be taking final steps here, the developer would surely like to demonstrate that no one is going to stop him, even as he imitate without keeping promises.   He’d like to show that community won’t stop him and that public officials like Comptroller Scott Stringer and Public Advocate Tish James won’t let out a squeak of opposition.  We buttonholed Comptroller Stringer just the other day and complained about his non-investigation of the library together with his failure to produce the BPL library audit he promised.  “I don’t investigate libraries,” he said.   We responded that his website, his press releases and public statements all represent that he does investigate corruption, fraud and abuse and the waste of city funds.  And Comptroller did produce an audit of the Queens Library where he went into details about much less significant matters comparatively involving just a few dollars: How the former Queen Library head improper used his library credit car to put gasoline in his other family members’ cars.

The head of the crew of men trashing the library didn’t want pictures taken or people walking on the public property near the library.  “You can’t do that!” he said, “they gave us the library!”