It’s What The Brooklyn Heights Association Wanted And Fought For: As Library-Replacing Lux Tower Gets Ready To Sprint Toward Full Height With Its Last Stack of Floors It Begins To Dominate Heights Skies

View of library-replacing luxury tower from Montague Street (crane working to add the last stack of thus boosted floors to achieve its final ultimate height)

The luxury condo tower, which in a shrink-and-sink deal is replacing the Business, Career and Education Federal Depository Library in Downtown Brooklyn, has another stack of floors to be constructed before it reaches full “stature,” if that’s the word for it.

The advertised condominium apartment views now available on the developer’s website show those views looking down on the federal courthouse across the way (once opposed by neighbors as being too tall) and looking over the top of the adjacent One Pierrepont Plaza Ratner 1988 skyscraper.  Those views are from only the height of the building’s twenty-sixth floor, round about the height the building is reaching now.  When the 400+ foot tall building is complete it will be 36 stories tall, an additional ten stories over that 26.

Looking down on the federal courthouse, a building one opposed as too big

The slightly higher than mid-level 26th Floor view gets you to the top of the Ratner skyscraper that vexed the Brooklyn Heights Association because of its size

But even at the threshold height it has now reached where it is, finally starting to leave the Ratner skyscraper below, it is now becoming clear how the building will dominate the skies of Brooklyn Heights.  We offer pictures here so you can imagine it even taller still.

It is interesting to think that this is what the Brooklyn Heights Association wanted for Brooklyn Heights, that it is what the association fought hard to bring into existence against the overwhelming consensus of neighbors who did not want to give up the second biggest library in Brooklyn, a central destination downtown library that conveniently served all Brooklynites and many other New Yorkers coming from all around the city.

It must be recognized that hugely tall buildings that leave their neighbors in the dust, at certain times, have, for many of us, a certain commanding beauty.  Sometimes you just have to begrudgingly admit that, even if and when they might make you feel small and insignificant or cast shadows onto your parks, they have an arresting way of whispering (or shouting) progress, achievement and newness while advertising human technological proficiency.  Maybe some who settled or who have dwelled enviously in Brooklyn Heights with a Manhattan-wannabe complex will feel that this building announces that Brooklyn Heights has arrived. 

Is this why the Brooklyn Heights Association fought so hard, often secretively and behind-the-scenes, to have this shiny new tower provide contrast for New York’s oldest historic district and  neighborhood by poking up into its skies where it will be seen from repeated vantages as the casual stroller meanders through local townhouse streets? . . .

. . .  Or was it that the Brooklyn Heights Association was just eager to see an important library squashed out of existence in a shrink-and-sink deal that would push the much diminished library space underground, while eliminating books and librarians, disappearing the Business Library, the Career Library, the Education library and the federal depository library resources?  Of course this means that the Brooklyn Heights Association was reversing itself from the time when it was opposing the height of the adjacent Ratner skyscraper and (in connection therewith) was negotiating for a bigger, better library.  And that bigger, better library the BHA said it wanted then is something the neighborhood finally got fairly recently, but now it's been been torn down for the luxury tower even though it was expanded and fully upgraded to be one of the best and most modern in the Brooklyn Public Library system.

. . . Of course shrinking the library and getting rid of the Business, Career and Education Federal depository resources does have the effect of evicting those who were coming from elsewhere, such as the nearby projects, to use the libraries.

. . .  Or did the Brooklyn Heights Association want to see the luxury tower replace the library because the Saint Ann’s private school was going to get a private windfall from the sale of real estate development rights it possessed provided that the city proceeded with eliminating the library?  Did it want that because the Saint Ann’s school contingent was better than well represented in the Brooklyn Heights Association’s decision making about what to do about the sale of the city land and public asset to create the luxury tower?  Moreover, the entangled Brooklyn Heights Association sidelined itself and eschewed speaking out in the name of good government, remaining steadfastly indifferent to the pay-to-play investigation scandals that emerged concerning the sale of the city owned library sale to a connected developer the de Blasio administration favored in the hand-off of the property for so much less than it was worth.  Once compromised in this regard it is more difficult to speak out in the future.

Of course all of this raises questions about what the BHA can be expected to do in the future and how reliable the BHA is, and for what (ditto an elected official like Councilman Steve Levin).  What will the BHA decide to oppose and what will it decide to promote?  There was, not long ago, a proposal to build another similar luxury tower just doors down from the library-replacing lux tower, the Pineapple Walk building.  The Heights Association, inconsistently we would say, opposed it.  That was then.  Real estate development is a long game.  No doubt that proposal will be back and when the library-replacing lux tower is fully present and accounted for it will seem even harder, seemingly sillier to oppose it. Maybe some of the new residents in the library-replacing tower will by then even be members of the BHA and arguing that it would be great to have a sister luxury Cadman Tower West building.

Then, aside from the question of what the BHA `opposes,' there is the question of what the BHA will be timely and effective at opposing.  We can note that the sale of Long Island College Hospital, The view-destroying over-construction of Brooklyn Bridge Park Pier One Pierrehouse buildings, the building at Pier Six in Brooklyn Bridge Park of more buildings than the agreed upon formula dictated, a lot of construction period as local public schools get more crowded were all things the BHA opposed, but its opposition was ineffective.

From Henry Street seen rising behind the Supreme Court Appellate Division Building

As seen from 101 Clark Street where many meetings were held to try to stop sale of the library

As seen currently (floors to go) from Monroe Place from where impetus and support for the building came.

Go all the way to to the end of this newly landscaped Brooklyn Bridge Park pier and you will find the tower following you like the moon follows you on along a road on a moonlight night

Behind the Unitarian Universalist church on Pierrepont Street

How Brooklyn Heights looks from the 26th floor of the luxury tower

Pay-To-Play Library Sale Questions Loom Larger As New York Post Reports Uncovering Emails That Confirm “Probably Inappropriate” de Blasio Administration Communications With Favored Developer And Possible “Violation” Of Bid Process- Post Editorial Calls For Investigation

Deputy Mayor fro Development and de Blasio selling off libraries, our letter to prosecutors calling for investigation. .  just like the New York Post

Questions having been looming, pretty much from the get-go, about the probability of the de Blasio administration’s engagement in pay-to-play activity when it sold, for far below its actual value, Brooklyn’s second biggest library, the Business, Career and Education Federal Depository Brooklyn Heights Library in downtown Brooklyn.

As of last week those questions loom still larger and more starkly as the New York Post reported uncovering emails from 2014 (March & September) confirming that the favored developer who was awarded the library site for a fraction of its value to the public, David Kramer of the Hudson Companies, whose development team channeled money to the de Blasio campaign, was communicating with de Blasio’s Deputy Mayor for development, Alicia Glen, for her assistance before being given the contract.  Kramer thanked Glen for “being the expeditor” saying that “Ever since our call in August, it feels like momentum finally started happening” and that he was “quite pleased with the outcome (how’s that for understatement).”  Kramer had at least two conversations with Glen before being granted the property.  The Post says that such conversations were barred under state law.

Going back in time to put this in context, that August referred to in Kramer’s email to Glen was the same August that Noticing New York laid out the history of the BPL’s systematic marshaling up its library assets, including the Heights Library, for sale as real estate deals, benefitting developers, not the public.  The month before, in July, Noticing New York had written about Spaceworks as just one vehicle for turning New York City Libraries into real estate deals.  September 16th, Citizens Defending Libraries followed up with a press release about its follow-up with its Citizens Audit and Investigation of Brooklyn Public Library- FOIL Requests and held a rally in connection therewith outside the Brooklyn Public Library Trustees meeting as the trustees voted to give the city-owned library to Kramer. 

The Post article quoted “a source familiar with the procurement process” who called the contacts between Glen and Kramer “completely inappropriate, and depending on what happens, probably a violation of the procurement rules.”  The Post article also noted that it had previous reported that Hudson won the contract despite that fact that its bid “was not the highest bid.”  And it noted that “Hudson received $10 million in financing from the same Goldman Sachs division that Glen used to oversee.”

Two days after the Post article ran, it was followed up with by an editorial calling for an investigation again noting that Kramer’s bid was not the highest plus the troubling Alicia Glen-Goldman Sachs connection to Kramer’s financing and adding:

State law bars contacts between firms and officials during bidding competitions to prevent favoritism or even the appearance of it.

    * * *

Worse, the deal fits a pattern of de Blasio donors getting favorable treatment: Who can forget City Hall’s OK for a nursing home to be turned into condos, reaping the developer a $72 million windfall? Or the favors for fat cats and unions that gave handsomely to the mayor’s campaign and his Campaign for One New York slush fund?

Prosecutors have failed to find enough smoking-gun evidence to charge anyone at City Hall. Let’s hope they’re still trying.

Here are links to the article and editorial:

•    Condo developer’s chat with deputy mayor raises questions about bid process, by Yoav Gonen, October 9, 2018

•    Yet another case of de Blasio’s City Hall for sale, By Post Editorial Board, October 11, 2018

We are thankful for the Post article and editorial and for the freedom of information request effort through which the Post obtained this information (even if belatedly). . .  The BPL and de Blasio administration have stonewalled Citizens Defending Libraries' FOIL, never turning over information that would similarly be relevant to discovering more about the library sales. . .

We are thankful, but we have to point out that there is more of this story to be told, more dots to be connected.

The Post article could have made much more clear that what was being sold off was not the “site of the Brooklyn Heights library branch” the article mentions, or the “Brooklyn library site” the editorial mentions, but the actual, still standing library itself.  Furthermore, the Post is incorrect in referring to the site as merely the site of a “branch” library: It was the site of a huge central destination library, the Business, Career and Education Federal Depository Library.  Neither the article nor the editorial says that this was the second biggest library in Brooklyn.  We had nothing else close either in terms of size or its valuable location.

Yes, the Post does make clear that Kramer, the low bidder, paid less for the site than the city would have gotten if it had given the site to another developer bidding to take the site, thus making clear its implication that in return for campaign contributions the de Blasio administration was willing sell a city asset for less than its value. . .  It is probably not a surprise that the de Blasio administration in such an exchange would sell a city asset for less than its worth as indicated by the Post, but the only way to truly realize how much was squandered by the de Blasio administration selling this central destination library off to the low bidder is to realize the value that this still-standing library had to the public.

Developers bidding for the library “site” (not the library) were bidding only for the tear-down value of the property, to them that was less valuable than the value of a vacant lot.  But this central destination library had recently been greatly expanded and fully ungraded in 1993.  It was one of the most technologically advanced in the system with more computers and access internet access at exactly the time when library administration officials said this was what they needed much more of.   It was one of the most solidly built libraries in the system. The Post describes David Kramer as paying “$52 million” for the site, but after all is reckoned and the many expenses and losses of selling the library are subtracted out, it is likely the sale will perhaps net not much more than $20 million— We’ll one day learn more about this from future FOIL requests, we hope . .  

The Brooklyn Heights Central destination library would cost at least $120 million to replace.  But we are not getting back our Business, Career and Education Federal Depository library.  Its books are disappearing, so are the librarians.  It’s a huge public loss.

The Post editorial incorrectly says that the Brooklyn Public Library “owned the site” of the library.  It didn’t; the city did.  That’s an example of the bureaucratic fuzz behind which city and library officials are trying to hide and to baffle the public with.  (However, the BPL, as the library tenant in the property, could have easily fought the sale.)  But, because of quotes offered by David Kramer defending his contacts with Alicia Glen in the original Post article we can strip away the illusion that the Brooklyn Public Library board is somehow politically independent enough to represent the public interest rather than just taking orders from City Hall.  Kramer explained about his calling Glen about the library sale told the Post (emphasis supplied):

Eight months into the new administration, we kept on hearing that EDC and [Brooklyn Public Library] were awaiting direction from City Hall    

Carolee Fink appointed to BPL board

If the Post wanted an addition to its reporting to make more ominous the de Blasio threat to our libraries when contributing developers `lurk,' it could have gone on to report that this April  Carolee Fink, Alicia Glen’s Chief of Staff, was appointed to BPL board by Mayor Bill de Blasio.  Ms. Fink’s status as Glen’s Chief of Staff can be explained by her deep involvement in pushing through real estate development projects.

More about Ms. Glen who, as noted, came from Goldman Sachs to the city to do development. In December 2015 when BPL president Linda Johnson told the BPL board of trustees how the sale of that library sale went down, a shrink-and-sink deal replacing the central destination library with a luxury tower, Johnson told the BPL board of trustees that Ms. Glen had adopted the library sale and shrinkage deal as “her own” to “push it across the finish line.”  The secretive final negotiations at City Hall included raiding Department of Education funds for space in the luxury building to help the developer. 

Not mentioned by the Post is that Glen’s push “across the finish line” also involved a raid on Department of Education Funds to help push the deal through with the manipulative and cockeyed idea of writing a black check to the developer to put a “STEM” or “STEAM” facility in the building.
  
Moreover, the trustees were told that this sale was a “huge turning point for the library system” and “across the city in general” with Johnson `pioneering’ the future of libraries.  And previously Ms. Johnson had told the city council that the shrink-and-sink sale would be a model for all three of the city’s library systems.

The Post fits the de Blasio gift of the library to Kramer in the “pattern of de Blasio donors getting favorable treatment” referring to Kramer as “a donor and longtime pal of Mayor de Blasio.”  We would have loved the Post to use the images we obtained of a de Blasio fund-raising event Kramer’s development team held for him, that they bragged about.  Their bragging was posted online just weeks after de Blasio held a big campaign event with Citizens Defending Libraries telling people he opposed the library sales and that there were, “lurking right behind the curtain, real estate developers who are very anxious to get their hands on these valuable properties.”

Kramer team de Blasio fund raiser picture taken down hastily by Marvel Architects as pay-to-play investigation heated up.

As the pay-to-play scandal escalated Marvel Architects, working for Kramer on the sale took down the images and their posted brags hoping no one would remember, but we have the images already, and they won’t go away.  See:

As Feeding Frenzy Elevates NY1 Covers De Blasio “Pay To Play” Violation: Taking Campaign Contributions From Kramer’s Hudson Companies While Handing Out Brooklyn Heights Library Deal- Marvel Architects Runs But Can’t Hide

The Post editorial ‘hoped’ that “prosecutors” were “still trying” to “find smoking-gun evidence to charge” people in City Hall.  We would have loved it if the Post had mentioned our open letter to those potential “prosecutors” requesting the exact same thing. See:

Open Letter to US Attorney Preet Bharara, NYS Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer, et al: Use Your Staggering Powers as Law Enforcers & Public Guardians To Immediately Halt the Corrupt Sale & Shrinking of Brooklyn Heights Library

One of the addressees we beseeched in our letter was Letitia James, currently Public Advocate for the City of New York, who with her likely step up to New York State Attorney General given her Democratic primary victory will have a lot more power to pursue this. . . if only she will.  We hope the Post will put pressure on Attorney General James to do so.

In February 2015, when the scandal about the facts pointing to a pay-to-play sale of the library were already getting press, Citizens Defending Libraries implored the Brooklyn Heights Association at its annual meeting to withdraw support for the library sale and back investigation of the sale, but the BHA refused.  See:

Annual Meeting of Brooklyn Heights Association- The BHA President Patrick Killackey Insists That BHA Will Continue To Betray Community By Supporting The Brooklyn Heights Library Sale & Shrinkage Notwithstanding Recent Scandals

The Post story and editorial about these emails breaks just as Kramer is about to market the luxury condos in the tower replacing the library sold for such a small fraction of its actual value to the public. See:

As Condo Apartments Set Brooklyn Heights Sales Records (You Heard About Matt Damon’s $16.645 Million Penthouse?) Central Library Sold To Build (Now About To be Marketed) Luxury Condos Nets Mere Pittance

Quoted in the above post, the Brooklyn Heights Association speaking through its executive director Peter Bray reiterated all over again its continuing support for the sale of the library saying, “We’ve taken a very close look at this project from day one.” 

The sale of the library could never have been pushed through without the BHA’s support.

As Condo Apartments Set Brooklyn Heights Sales Records (You Heard About Matt Damon’s $16.645 Million Penthouse?) Central Library Sold To Build (Now About To be Marketed) Luxury Condos Nets Mere Pittance

What Brooklyn Heights real estate news do you want to hear about first?

Do you want to know that the condos in One Clinton, the luxury tower that’s replacing Brooklyn’s second biggest library, what was the Business, Career and Education Federal Depository Library, the central destination Brooklyn Heights Library in Downtown Brooklyn, are about to be marketed?

The Standish

Or do you want to hear that condo apartments are setting sales records- yes, apartments, not even townhouses, with Matt Damon showing up in Curbed and the Wall Street Journal with reports that he is in contract to buy a $16.645 million penthouse in The Standish, converted from what was once a hotel.  That’s maybe more fun to hear about.  As Curbed points out, if the reports prove to be true, the $16.645 million asking price for the penthouse will “beat the record” set by the  sale of a Cobble Hill townhouse, 177 Pacific Street, bought by photographer Jay Maisel going into contract for $16 million (but closing for just $12.9 million) in 2015.  The next runner up cited by Curbed was another apartment, Dumbo’s Clocktower penthouse, which sold for $15 million. . . . Wow!  Such a price, even when The Standish is fairly nondescript by Brooklyn Heights standards!

New, about to open sales office for One Clinton at 153 Remsen Street.  Is this a transaction to depict in shades of grey?  Probably not. 

Back to One Clinton: Sunday’s New York Times Real Estate Section reported on the commencement of the apartment sales.  See: The High End- A Condo Tower on a Library Site- Sales begin at a Brooklyn Heights building that faces Cadman Plaza and replaces a 1960s library with a smaller branch and 134 condos.-  By C. J. Hughes, September 14, 2018

The Real Estate Section article puts front and center the critical issue of the library sell-off that preceded these condo sales well, and it quotes one of our Citizens Defending Libraries co-founders while doing so:

Opponents say that the project, from the Hudson Companies, has done something deeply offensive: bulldoze a library, and a popular one at that, to make way for luxury housing.

 “The developer is coming to clearly enrich himself at the expense of the public,” said Michael D. D. White, a co-founder of Citizens Defending Libraries, a group formed in 2013 after city officials announced plans to redevelop the site, which is on Cadman Plaza West at Clinton Street, near Brooklyn Borough Hall.

“Memories are not going to go away,” added Mr. White, who over the years has organized protests near the former library, which was built in 1962, and plans to stage another with the opening of the condo’s sales office.

    . . .  Mr. White said the new library would be a pale substitute for the old version, in part because it’s so much smaller than the former library, which measured 59,000 square feet. Many rooms in the new library will also be underground, another unwelcome change, Mr. White added.

Unfortunately, this good press regarding how unfortunate the sale of the library is, comes after the sale has occurred and the library destroyed.  And it’s in the Real Estate Section, a section of the paper most readers find their way to because they are interested in tracking real estate business or buying (an often luxury) place to live.  There are other sections of the paper that have more to do with holding our public officials to account, officials like those who pushed this library sale through: Mayor de Blasio (in what was looked at as a pay-to-play deal), Councilman Brad Lander and Councilman Steve Levin among them.

The Times article also notes the role of Brooklyn Community Board Two and the Brooklyn Heights Association in pushing through the library sale.  In fact, given yet one more opportunity to back off from its crucial support in putting through the library sale and shrinkage with the elimination of the Business, Career, and Education and Federal Depository library parts of the library previously there, the Brooklyn Heights Association speaking through its executive director Peter Bray reiterated all over again its continuing support for the sale of the library saying, “We’ve taken a very close look at this project from day one.”   The Times, in passing, made sly note of the  incongruity that the Brooklyn Heights Association “has railed against other residential towers.”  That includes the association’s objections to the very similar and similarly located Pineapple Walk tower that was proposed . . .

. . . The Times article didn’t mention that one difference with the library sale luxury tower, as opposed to those other residential towers “railed against,” was that Saint Ann’s School was cashing in as a big beneficiary of the transaction and the BHA allowed BHA board members from the community connected to Saint Ann’s a great deal of influence with respect to approving the transaction.

More objectionable than Saint Ann’s School cashing in on the sale of this public asset is the comparative pittance that went to the public in exchange for giving up its library.  The library had been significantly expanded and fully upgraded quite recently in 1993, making it one of the most modern and up to date in the system with lots of computer resources.  The library would cost over $120 million to replace.  But the library was sold for less than its tear down value, for just a very few multiples what Matt Damon is paying for his apartment.  Unfortunately, that figure is not what the Brooklyn Public Library will net from the sale after all the losses and expenses are tallied.  That figure will be considerably less.

The Brooklyn Public Library has not been forthcoming about the numbers that should be worked into such a final reckoning, but if our estimates are close to the mark, then the BPL will net probably not much more than what Matt Damon is paying for his penthouse.  If our figures are off the mark and we have overestimated what the BPL will net, the BPL might even net less than Damon is plunking down for his new Brooklyn Heights digs.

As for the buyers of One Clinton condos?  They may not be encountering prospects as gilded as they hope.   The library, before it was destroyed, was inscribed with a promise on its wall that faced north under the shade of what were Truth Park’s trees.  The promise was that those who came to the site would not find gold, just truth and wisdom as long as that’s what they sought.  The inscription read:

All that come here to seek treasure will not take away gold but the seeker after truth and instruction will find that which will enrich the mind and heart

It was a promise offering hope and inspiration to the many coming to the library site for the public purposes to which the library was dedicated. . .  But it was an admonition to those less pure coming to the site seeking instead only to satisfy their greed.

“Memories are not going to go away”: The inscription, `truth, instruction and an enriched mind and heart, not gold' on the side library facing Truth Park

2018 Brooklyn Heights Association Annual Meeting - (The BHA promoted the sale and shrinkage of the Central Destination Business, Career and Education Brooklyn Heights Library)

2018 Annual Brooklyn Heights Association meeting

Wednesday night was the annual meeting of the Brooklyn Heights Association.

Two non-affiliated community grassroots groups were there handing out flyers to promote worthy causes.  One group was assisted in its flyering efforts by the BHA president, but the BHA president sought to quash the flyering work of the other group.  Can you guess which is which?

    •    FLAC (Flower Lovers Against Corruption) was handing out a flyer urging protection of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden against overdevelopment in the form of an upzoning that would result in the intrusion of huge towers around what is supposed to be the protected perimeter surrounding the Garden.  With those new towers the Garden would no longer be experienced as a the bucolic nature preservation it is.

    •    Citizens Defending Libraries was handing out a flyer urging the protection of another public commons, our libraries, and urging that the Brooklyn Heights Association lobby for a bigger “replacement” library to replace the Central Destination Business, Career and Education Brooklyn Heights Library that the BHA helped destroy.

The group that the BHA didn’t want handing out information to the attending public was us, Citizens Defending Libraries, and the fact that the Brooklyn Heights Association would seeks to stymie us as we informed the community that we were beseeching the Heights Association to come out for a bigger better library (while selectively helping our comrade-in-arms activist group also looking to preserve the public commons and realm), is indicative of the increasingly elitist and dictatorial behavior of the Heights Association.   . . . Is it purely coincidence that this was the year that the Heights Association abandoned its three decade tradition of fundraising house tours because board no longer thought the general public should be invited in to see the stately homes of neighborhood residents?

Every year in recent history the Brooklyn Heights Association has conducted its annual meetings in ways that increasingly circumscribe public feedback, comment and input about what people want in the community.   The timing of such curtailment coincides to a great degree with something the BHA did against the community’s wishes and disregarding its objections: That was the BHA coming out in favor of selling and shrinking the second biggest library in Brooklyn, the Central Destination Business, Career and Education Brooklyn Heights Library in downtown Brooklyn.

Here are the two flyers, FLAC’s and our Citizens Defending Libraries flyer respectively, handed out at the annual meeting.

FLAC Flyer - Click to enlarge

* * * *

Citizens Defending Libraries flyer

Here is the text of the Citizens Defending Libraries flyer:

IT IS NOT TOO LATE TO LOBBY FOR A BIGGER LIBRARY

For years running the Brooklyn Heights Association supported the sale and shrinkage of the second biggest library in Brooklyn, the central destination downtown Brooklyn Heights Business, Career and Education Library.  As a result, replaced in a luxury tower shrink-and-sink deal, that library, now a hole in the ground, will be smaller, more underground and will have far fewer books (while a looming tower overshadows Cadman Plaza Park).

Not long before, BHA support had won the community the expansion and complete upgrade of the library.  It is not too late for the BHA to reverse course again and lobby for a bigger replacement library.  (This would also restore funds raided from the Department of Education!) 

ALLOWING SALES THAT LOOT OUR LIBRARIES,
(pushing our libraries out the door to plundering plutocrats, handing them over to developers) HAS CONSEQUENCES

It has been noted that if Steve Mnuchin had been vigorously prosecuted at the local level for his business’s mortgage fraud, misrepresentations, backdating and falsification of documents to rev up the pace of his OneWest foreclosure mill, he wouldn’t be Treasury Secretary, appointed by Donald Trump today- Similarly, had NYS Attorney General Eric Schneiderman investigated the shrink-and-sink Donnell Library plunder with Blackstone’s Stephen A. Schwarzman involved on the selling side and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner as principal financial beneficiary, those two Trump henchmen might not be in significant positions of power today.  The whole political landscape at the national level could be different, not to mention having healthier local politics.

When our local officials and organizations allow the corrupt plundering of valuable public assets, like the shrink-and-sink Brooklyn Heights Library deal modeled on the sale of Donnell with some of the same people in the background, it feeds the beasts who go on to prey on us in so many other ways.

It doesn’t serve us that Stephen A. Schwarzman, spearheading Trump’s economic policy and sale of American infrastructure, is also one of Senator Schumer’s biggest donors, just as Schumer’s wife’s connections with selling libraries and privatizing public assets also do not.  City Councilman Steve Levin misleadingly assured that he would do his job and insist on transparency respecting the library sales but, betraying his constituents, never has. Thus the lack of transparency in Brooklyn Heights helps Donnell sink unchallenged into the sunset (even as Preet Bhrara investigated the mayor’s play-to-play).

Sign our petition on the web: Citizens Defending Libraries

The BHA reported this year that it had constructively received a donation of $2 million from the law firm of  Jenner & Block for the pro bono work that attorney Richard Ziegler has done attempting to block development of towers at Pier 6 in Brooklyn Bridge Park.  Unfortunately, the faltering fights against development in the park, the over-tall Pierrehouse included (same architect involved in trashing the library) are examples of fights where the BHA entered the fray late.  “A stitch in time saves nine.”
                                       
The Heights Association’s cause–de-jour at the meeting is an effort by the association to get legislation passed in Albany to allow reconstruction of the cantilevered BQE (Brooklyn Queens Expressway) roadways under the Brooklyn Heights Promenade to be handled through a “Design Build” contract rather than through the normal competitive bid processes that are normally prescribed for this kind of public construction.  The Brooklyn Heights Association is promoting passage of the legislation with a petition and other lobbying efforts including a bus trip to Albany.

The BHA’s featured speaker of the evening, NYC Department of Transportation Deputy Commissioner and Chief Bridge Officer Robert Collyer, addressed the subject.  Interestingly, he mentioned that the Pier 6 Towers being built near the BQE in Brooklyn Bridge Park and other luxury towers going up in the vicinity were going to make the needed repairs to the BQE more difficult to do.  He said that the impending tower construction was creating a “narrow window” to get the repairs done as efficiently as possible.  We know that some library defenders have raised the question of how construction to build the luxury tower to replace the library may conflict awkwardly with BQE repairs as it is predicted that the Hudson Companies construction at the former library site will often block both Clinton Street and Cadman Plaza West.  This might happen just as traffic from the BQE is diverted through the same set of neighborhood streets.

Collyer noted that Furman Street under the BQE needed to be raised because of climate warming and rising sea levels.  He said there was no plan to raise the levels of the BQE roadways.

When Mr. Collyer was asked why the “Design Build” legislation was not yet enacted, he said that it had not passed in the NYS senate, but said that he did not comment on politics.

The Brooklyn Heights Association has communicated to the community its conclusion that the BQE should be reconstructed via a “Design Build,” contract and it has communicated this to the community as if it is a no-brainer.  It did not offer for discussion any of the reasons that “Design Build” could be less preferable.  The BHA may have reached the right conclusion about this, but it is hardly a no-brainer.

“Design Build” diminishes certain competitive bid and cost protections.  It also scrambles loyalties and duties of those doing the construction for better and/or worse giving the overseeing city public works engineers less control over the project.  It could possibly be argued that the balance of interests in play if a “Design Build” contract is used for this section of the BQE is that the work, including work on the Heights Promenade would be completed more quickly, but at a higher cost paid for by all the city’s residents.  (Neither is absolutely provable or certain.)

Through performance specifications, one has to be careful that “Design Build” does not encourage inappropriate cost cutting on the part of the contractors.  For instance, costs may be cut that increase the cost of maintenance and repair later on.  That is one reason that one of the several variations of “Design Build” contracts are DBOM contracts, “Design-Build-Operate-Maintain” contracts.  But as you contemplate such a concept, you may begin to recognize how “Design Build” partakes in an overall and increasing tendency to contract out more and more of the traditional work of government to the private sector.

There is plenty of work, there are plenty of endeavors, that, final analysis are probably best handled by the private sector, but when more and more work is handed off to private sector and the government that is supposed to oversee that work and is simultaneously starved of resources it can be a problem.  It is especial a problem when there is corruption that needs to be protected against.  It should be remembered that government is supposed to be the guardian of the public interest, even if it is more and more often abdicating or selling off that function.

Point of interest: When it came to the sale and shrinkage of the library, Citizens Defending Libraries asked the Brooklyn Heights Association to get involved in fighting the corruption involved and the Brooklyn Heights Association declined.

Quite a few times during the meeting Mr. Collyer was asked about what design decisions were being made with respect to repairing the BQE and answered that he didn’t know, that was to be determined . . . (in essence by a contracting out).  His answers in this regard were quite consistent with being headed toward a contracting out of such analysis to the private sector with a “Design Build” handling of the matter.

Here are articles about the considerations inherent in deciding whether or not to do a “Design Build” contract.

    •    American City and County- The growth (and growing pains) of design-build construction, Edward J. Pabor and Richard Pennington, April 1, 2012 (terrible date for a serious article)

    •    Schiff Hardin- Seven Legal Issues Unique to Design-Build, by Mark C. Friedlander, June 5, 2015

    •    Design-Build Effectiveness Study, Final Report, Prepared for: USDOT - Federal Highway Administration, January 2006

Want to read more about the meeting?  Here is where you can go:

    •    Brooklyn Daily Eagle- Repairs to Brooklyn Heights BQE & Promenade hit home at BHA Annual Meeting- Waterfront tunnel not option, dire local traffic scene feared; Bus trip to lobby Albany, By Mary Frost

WHO Is Selling Our Libraries?

The plans to sell our libraries were announced under the Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration and it appears that they go back to at least 2005 and probably at least 2004.  Prior to the Bloomberg administration, NYC libraries were being expanded significantly under the Giuliani administration.  During the 2013 mayoral race, candidate Bill de Blasio said that the library sales should be halted, but in short order Mr. de Blasio was taking money from real estate developers "behind the curtain  . .very anxious to get their hands on these valuable properties.”

Once in office, Mayor Bill de Blasio continued with the library sales he decried as a candidate, although, to give the devil his due, de Blasio did not proceed with the full-blown NYPL Central Library Plan.  While the Mid-Manhattan library is now being subjected to a consolidating shrinkage it is no longer being sold straight out, but, under Mayor de Blasio we are still selling SIBL the city's biggest science library.  We are also still exiling research books off premises from where they were once readily and quickly retrievable at the 42nd Street Library.


There are other elected officials that are avidly taking the lead pushing these city library sales.  Foremost among them is city council member Brad Lander.  Also clearly conspicuous in his enthusiastic and unrelenting support for these plans is Jimmy Van Bramer head of the City Council Cultural Committee of which the city council's library subcommittee is a sub-component he domainates in leading.  .  .

 . .  Each particular local city council member must also be held responsible for what happens to the libraries in their districts, but revelations are that many of them, like Councilman Stephen Levin (Brooklyn Heights and Williamsburg libraries), Ydanis Rodriguez (Inwood Library) and Carlos Manchacca (Sunset Park Library), were brought on board behind the scenes in advance to help push these library deals through without regard to what their community constituents want.

New Yorkers are, of course, more and more accustomed to local New York City officials selling out the public interest to favor the real estate industry, but they will still often ask, rather incredulously, whether the people running the libraries and setting policy are opposing these library sales expecting that to be their duty.  The answer is that they are not.  The sale and shrinkage of the city libraries is happening only because top library administration officials and the boards of the three library systems are supporting these sales and working to advance them.

Back in the 1970s when the real estate industry wanted to get hold of Brooklyn's Pacific Street Library the head of the Brooklyn Public Library joined the community in fighting to defeat them, but now. . .

Stephen A. Schwarzman, a trustee on the board of the NYPL and the head of the Blackstone Group, which as just one of the arms of its business is the world's largest real estate investment company (including buildings close by on Bryant Park), transferred $100 million to the NYPL based on his understanding that the consolidating shrinkage of the Central Library Plan was to proceed.  Mr. Schwarzman is now spearheading Trump administration ambitions to privatize many more of the nation's public assets in deals where it is likely private insiders will benefit the way that Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner did when the Donnell Library was sold (with whom he is now doing many, many troublesome deals.)

Similarly, the board of trustees of the Brooklyn Public Library is rife with people who crop up in connection with promoting other real estate development (including working to maximize development in Brooklyn Bridge Park), political operatives, Goldman Sachs people, a long list of people whose agenda would seem to be adverse to the patrons and users of the libraries.  You have situations such as David Offensend being in place as Chief Operating Officer at the NYPL implementing the Donnell Library sale and the Central Library Plan sales at the same time that his wife, Janet Offensend, was concocting a fate for the Brooklyn Heights Library based on replication of the Donnell deal. There is much to say about the way that boards like these that should have non-profit goals are straying from their missions.  It is expected that the recent recomposition of the Queens Library board will have that board following suit with the NYPL and BPL.

There are also other outside groups that, while they talk about how they believe in the importance of libraries, actually work to promote and support these sales and shrinkages.  For instance, the Center for an Urban Future supported the Donnell Library sale and shrinkage and the Central Library Plan, as did a group named Urban Librarians Unite, which was formed in 2008 just as the library administration and city officials were unveiling and gearing up promotion for their library real estate plans.  Both of these groups (like library-shrinking Spaceworks) get significant funding from The Revson Foundation which has been involved in promoting libraries as real estate deals from the beginning. The Revson Foundation can be connected to Bloomberg Daniel Doctoroff development people formerly on the BPL board like Sharon Greenberger and to the Robin Hood Foundation that is taking the lead in the Inwood Library sale.

Unexpected wild cards also crop up: The Brooklyn Heights Association that once fought to enlarge the central downtown Brooklyn Heights Library, later betrayed the community to instead advocate for the library's sale and shrinkage when, behind the scenes, a number of its board members were connected with Saint Ann's, a private school that was benefitting terrifically from its participation in the real estate deal.  (The Heights Association became a strange empty doughnut hole in the list of surrounding neighborhood associations signing our letter of support to opposing such library sales.-   For cover the BHA hid behind the skirts of a recently taken over and shrunken Friends of the Brooklyn Heights Library.)  The Fifth Avenue Committee, a group that holds itself out as acting in the community interest and has some history of doing so has gone out of its way to vociferously support  library sales and shrinkage while its deep involvement benefitting from such development necessitated recusal of its head, Michelle de la Uz, on the City Planing Commission.

Another category of public officials who can be held responsible for the library sales are those who have not done enough to stand up to the real estate industry to oppose them.  The borough presidents have considerable power to oppose these deals.  Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams who at one point showed courage opposing the destruction of the Brooklyn Heights Library, ultimately reversed, surrendering his support for that and the Sunset Park Library sale.  Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer has been far more complicit in supporting the destruction of SIBL, and the consolidating shrinkage of the Midtown Campus Plan plus the sale of the Inwood Library.  The borough presidents also have representatives on the City Planning Commission, which although loaded with conflicts that bias it towards dispensing favor to the real estate community, must do things like weigh in on most city library sales.

The current NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer wrote a strong letter critical of the BPL's sale and shrinkage of its second biggest biggest library in Brooklyn with the current NYC Public Advocate Tish James following suit to write similarly, and as a candidate for office candidate James campaigned against such shrinkages . . . Nevertheless, the list of public officials who have not done enough to exercise their formidable powers must notably include those two top elected officials as well as investigators and law enforcement officials such as the New York State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman who, aside from investigating and prosecuting transgressions of New York State Law is also, by state law, specifically assigned the responsibility for ensuring that the charities like those running the libraries properly perform the missions.  Had Mr. Schneiderman investigated the Donnell Library sale as we asked he might have prophylactically side-lined the likes of Stephen A. Schwarzman and Jared Kushner, key players in Donald Trump's campaign for president and now in his administration.

There are also reasons to expect that state and federal officials could be doing more to fend off the library destructions, although in this regard it should be considered that Stephen Schwarzman and his Blackstone Group make major contributions to Senator Schumer (making Schumer in 2014 the #1 Blackstone-supported politician in New York State and the #4 Blackstone supported politician nationwide) and Senator Schumer's wife, Iris Weinshall, having replaced David Offensend as Chief Operating Officer at the NYPL, is now the one in charge of such things as selling SIBL, the consolidating shrinkage of the Midtown Campus Plan, and adding the Inwood Library to the list of libraries targeted for sale (after she engaged in similar work with respect to real estate assets of CUNY).

The sale of our libraries bleeds into our national politics in other ways with Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and Schwarzman being involved in the sale of Donnell while Hillary Clinton's national campaign headquarters were located at a building which was for real estate development purposes was at the corner of Tillary and Clinton part of the same real estate parcel as Brooklyn's second biggest library being sold, with her landlord Forest City Ratner participating in that deal offensively replicating the shrink-and-sink Donnell sale.

For complete information go back to our Citizens Defending Libraries Main Page (or to read through all the content of our Main Page in LONG FORM CLICK)

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

While NYC developers are clearly eyeing New York City public libraries for how they can be turned into real estate deals like, for instance, the luxury tower that the central destination Manhattan Donnell Library was turned into and the luxury tower that the central destination Brooklyn Heights Library is being turned into, developers apparently also value private libraries as a selling point for their developments.  Which is to say that as the industry is besieging and destroying public libraries it is creating small private libraries to sell its product.

Not that many months before it was announced that the Business Career and Education Library Brooklyn Heights Library serving the central business district in Brooklyn’s downtown would be sold for a shrink-and-sink real estate transaction, the New York Times ran a front page article on Sunday Real Estate Section an article about developer incorporation of private libraries into their projects to enhance their attraction marketing their product.  See: Buildings with Libraries: A Soft-Spoken Amenity, Joanne Kaufman, April 5, 2012.

Luxury tower apartments that replaced Donnell Library created were repeated advertised in the New York Timed featuring the private library in the Penthouse. 

Conceived at essentially the same time, the shrink-and-sink sale of the Brooklyn Heights Library replicated shrink-and-sink sale of the Donnell Library.  Those luxury tower apartments that the shrink-and-sink disposal Donnell Library created were advertised repeatedly with a double page spread in the front of the Sunday New York Times Magazine with a visual that featured a view of the private library in the building’s penthouse.  That’s the penthouse that was on the market for $60 million in stark contrast to the less than $25 million the NYPL netted when it sold for drastic shrinkage the five-story, 97,000 square foot library. . . .

. .  The calculations are embarrassing in other respects, including that the 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.

Until this year (2016), the Brooklyn Heights Association annually replenished its war chest through house tours capitalizing on people’s voyeuristic infatuation and longing for luxury real estate living.  The tours afforded the public tantalizing views of the select interiors of many of the magnificent homes in the neighborhood.  Proceeds for the tours funded whatever fights the BHA took on in its proclaimed mission to protect the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood.  In the 1980s until 1993, when it was finally accomplished, one of those fights was for a substantial enlargement of the Brooklyn Heights Library.  That substantial enlargement of the library was accompanied by a complete and full upgrade that made it one of the most technologically advanced and computer equipped libraries in Brooklyn.

 . . . Ironically, come 2013 the Brooklyn Heights Association promoted the sale and shrinkage of that same library (which through sale of real estate development rights would benefit the private saint Ann’s School behind the scenes- Saint Ann’s School with which the BHA and its decision-making library committee was tightly linked).

 . . .  Another irony: 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, an extravaganza to induce mouth-watering salivation, was a townhouse equipped with its own two-story private library customized with magnificently detailed yellow-green wood bookshelves . . .   

The 2012 Times Real Estate section article about the real estate sales advantage of libraries for developers is about the creation of private libraries to be shared as common areas by all the residents of a building.  It has a senior VP of the real estate brokerage Corcoran Group, Tami Shaoul, explain that while when selling apartments, no buyers have told her that they, “must have a library,” their eyes “light up if they actually see one,” and  “It makes them feel good about the building because they imagine themselves having that quiet space.”

We also learn from the article that the existence of such a library can speak “to the fact that this was more than a building. It was a community of people who still read” and that “in the highly competitive New York marketplace” a common shared library “is a low-cost frill.”  This is in a developers’ “amenities arms race” involving more expensive amenities such as “cold storage, wine cellar, gym, pool, hot tub, children’s playroom, ’tween playroom, party room,” . . . real estate developers are spending money.  And we learn that the “library at New York by Gehry” in the financial district is “a hit” (with “leather sofas and accent chairs”) and that “some of New York’s glossiest and highest profile new developments boast of having one.”

If only we as a city could also boast of a wonderful, robustly supported public library around every corner from all of these developer projects.

Brooklyn Heights Association 2017 Annual Meeting- "What To Do In The Age of Trump"

BHA 2017 Annual Meeting- Well attended, but public participation "in the age of Trump" was not invited

This post will be updated.

The Brooklyn Heights Association 2017 Annual Meeting was held Monday, February 27, 20017 at the Saint Francis College auditorium on Remsen Street.

The BHA gave its neighborhood report.  That report contained no mention of the destruction of the Brooklyn Heights Library, the BHA's continuing support of its shrink-and-sink sale or the ongoing abuses such as the felling just days before of five neighborhood trees, at the library's Truth Park excused by the false representation that the developer had already acquired the property from the city.

Things were tightly controlled this year with no invitation for public questioning or input, except that, as part of panel discussion of de Blasio's proposed (and at this meeting largely ridiculed) BQX riverfront trolley proposal, the public could hand in suggestions questions written on index cards.  Virtually no time was devoted to those questions and essentially none of them asked.

An example of one of the many questions from attendees that were submitted, but never asked.

Not surprisingly, the BHA proclaimed with great solemnity how important it was to consider what its role should be "in the age of Trump."   Its answer was that locals should get more involved supporting the BHA and working for better schools. . . . We had a flyer prepared and distributed it to nearly everyone at the very well attended meeting that we think addresses in much more telling and pertinent terms what the BHA's responsibilities should be "in the age of Trump."   

Below, in both text and as a jpg is the flyer we distributed.

ALLOWING SALES THAT LOOT OUR LIBRARIES, (pushing our libraries out the door to plundering plutocrats, handing them over to developers) HAS CONSEQUENCES

It has been noted that if Steve Mnuchin had been vigorously prosecuted at the local level for his business’s mortgage fraud, misrepresentations, backdating and falsification of documents to rev up the pace of his OneWest foreclosure mill, he wouldn’t be Treasury Secretary, appointed by Donald Trump today- Similarly, had NYS Attorney General Eric Schneiderman investigated the shrink-and-sink Donnell Library plunder with Blackstone’s Stephen A. Schwarzman involved on the selling side and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner as principal financial beneficiary, those two Trump henchmen might not be in significant positions of power today.  The whole political landscape at the national level could be different, not to mention having healthier local politics.

When our local officials and organizations allow the corrupt plundering of valuable public assets, like the shrink-and-sink Brooklyn Heights Library deal modeled on the sale of Donnell with some of the same people in the background, it feeds the beasts who go on to prey on us in so many other ways.

It doesn’t serve us that Stephen A. Schwarzman, spearheading Trump’s economic policy, is also one of Senator Schumer’s biggest donors, just as Schumer’s wife’s connections with selling libraries and privatizing public assets also do not.  City Councilman Steve Levin misleadingly assured that he would do his job and insist on transparency respecting the library sales but, betraying his constituents, never has. Thus the lack of transparency in Brooklyn Heights helps Donnell sink unchallenged into the sunset (even as Preet Bhrara investigates the mayor’s play-to-play).

Meanwhile, five trees were felled at the Heights library by a developer who doesn’t not yet own it, while the Brooklyn Heights Association lets such library-trashing abuses multiply despite having sworn to protect the public. (The library was promised to stay open until it was acquired, and should be open even now.)

We can commend Irene Janner, receiving an award today, for her first CB2 vote against selling the library, but can’t let go unobserved the awkwardness, as the library stills hangs in the balance, of those two subsequent votes involving flip-flops where the BHA forced the library sale through,  overriding the original hearing.  WE DESERVE BETTER!
    
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