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?

The photo of Bruce and Linda that creeps in here is from a recent BPL gala

Sometimes to report truly relevant news, even about the real estate deal sales that plunder our libraries, you have to sound a little bit like a gossip column. . . .

Guess who’s dating whom on the sly?  Guess who just got divorced?  What two darlings spotlighted in the annals of library sell-off deals are shacking up in a love nest the location of which you might find startling and hard to fathom?

A couple of days ago reporting by the Real Deal highlighted three “memorable” residential sales that just “popped up in records.”  The number one deal highlighted was a couple’s purchase of one of the luxury condo apartments in the much litigated over and promenade-view-impairing Pierhouse development in Brooklyn Bridge Park at 130 Furman Street. . .

And who was the “couple”?: it was Bruce Ratner and Brooklyn Public Library President Linda Johnson.

To wit, here is what the Real Deal reported:

    1.) Forest City Ratner co-founder Bruce Ratner along with Linda Johnson snapped up a condominium along the Brooklyn waterfront. The couple paid $4.7 million for the two-bedroom pad at 130 Furman Street. Ratner split from Dr. Pamela Lipkin, a plastic surgeon, who at one point during the couple’s divorce had alleged Ratner was trying to evict her from her clinic at 128 East 62nd Street.

See:  These are some of the most notable NYC resi sales of the week- Lots of Brooklyn Nets connections, by Mary Diduch, January 28, 2019

We generally like to be well wishers when couples unite, but what a confluence of the unsavory this is.  Where do we start in making the connections; there are so many connectable dots in play:

    •    Bruce Ratner is, after all, the Bruce Ratner “developer” of Forest City Ratner, who, as in the case of the Atlantic Yards Project (now going by the alias “Pacific Park”- Park?), has specialized in subsidy collection and preferential no-bid handouts from government.  When BPL president Linda Johnson first announced the sale of Brooklyn public libraries, saying that the BPL wanted to sell the most valuable libraries first, the two libraries at the top of her list for sale first were both adjacent to Forest City Ratner property.  See:  What Could We Expect Forest City Ratner Would Do With Two Library Sites On Sale For The Sake Of Creating Real Estate Deals? and A Ratner in the Stacks: Library To Sell Forest City-Adjacent Branches, by Stephen Jacob Smith, February 5, 2013.

    •    The BPL’s plan that prioritized for first sale of the two Ratner adjacent was part of a strategic real estate plan that applied to all Johnson’s BPL libraries, and we found out that the consultant who put that plan to together was Karen Backus of Karen Backus & Associates. Karen Backus was Vice President at Forest City Ratner until 1997 when she left to start this firm.  See: Mostly In Plain Sight (A Few Conscious Removals Notwithstanding) Minutes Of Brooklyn Public Library Tell Shocking Details Of Strategies To Sell Brooklyn’s Public Libraries.

    •    BPL’ spokesperson Josh Nachowitz said that the BPL would not rule out the possibility that it would sell to Ratner one of those BPL libraries prioritized for first sale, the second biggest library in Brooklyn, the central destination Business, Career and Education Brooklyn Heights federal depository library in downtown Brooklyn.  Ultimately, under the circumstances, doing so would have been very bad optics.  The Heights library was not, in fact sold to Ratner.  Nevertheless, the deal was structured in such a way that Ratner became the gatekeeper controlling whether the transaction could proceed.  See: Forest City Ratner As The Development Gatekeeper (And Profit taker) Getting The Benefit As Brooklyn Heights Public Library Is Sold.

    •    BPL president Johnson and Ratner will settle into the Pierhouse amongst company they know well and have significant connections to.  In September 2015 it was considered a scandal when it was discovered that Hank Gutman (Henry B. Gutman) and David Offensend had both purchased condo apartments in the Brooklyn Bridge Park Pierhouse condominium.  Both Gutman and Offensend were board members of the board of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation (BBPC) that had to approve the Pierhouse development, something that then required the Conflicts of Interest Board to rule on whether this was a conflict (a ruling that it is not, is only a ruling by a politically connected COIB).  The Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation has pushed for development in Brooklyn Bridge Park.  It has a lot of probably not so coincidental overlap with the board of the BPL where the trustees have pushed to turn libraries into real estate development.  Two of those overlaps are Mr. Gutman and Mr. Offensend themselves. Mr. Gutman who is also on the BPL board has been one of those pushing for library sales.  Mr. Offensend’s wife, Janet Offensend, was also on the BPL board for a critical period of time where she spearheaded adoption of the BPL strategic real estate plan to sell BPL libraries. That included hiring consultant Karen Backus from Forest City Ratner and overseeing the creation and submission of the Backus recommendations).  Janet Offensend’s work as a trustee closely mirrors the work that David Offensend, her husband, was concurrently doing as he set NYC public libraries up for sale when he was Chief Operating Officer of the New York Public Library (NYPL).  Thus, two of the first library sales by the NYPL and BPL respectively, the shrink-and-sink deal of the Donnell Library and the shrink-and-sink deal of the Brooklyn Heights Library (with Ratner as gatekeeper) mirrored each other closely   

    •    With David Offensend being involved in the approval of both transactions, Starwood Development wound up being involved both as a developer of the challenged Pierhouse development in Brooklyn Bridge Park and the luxury development that replaced the Donnell Library sold by the NYPL.

    •    The reason that the Pierhouse development was legally challenged, that community residents were so angry with the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation and its board, and with Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation board members Gutman and Offensend getting condo apartments from the developer (even if the COIB declared there was no conflict of interest) was because of the shenanigans involved when the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation (pushing for more development all the time anyway) allowed the Pierhouse development to violate representations and promises made to the community: The Pierhouse development surprised the community by being built extra tall, and obliterated views from the Brooklyn Heights promenade that were supposed to have been protected.  The Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation tried shuffling off some of the blame to the Pierhouse development architects and including the way that those architects had done their numbers while interpreting some obscure rules the architects chose to apply in making the Pierhouse taller.

    •    Johnson and Ratner’s familiarity with Marvel Architects, the architects of their new digs also relates to libraries.  Marvel Architects, headed by Jonathan Marvel, in addition with being accused of running funny numbers to make Pierhouse taller is also the architect for the luxury tower replacing the Brooklyn Heights Business, Career and Education Library, plus is acting as advisor to Ms. Johnson and the BPL on design issues related to selling that library.  Marvel, as advisor to the BPL and Ms. Johnson came up with some very suspicious numbers respecting book counts and bookshelf capacity as the BPL tried to mount and press arguments to ensure that the library was sold for development.  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.

•         At this point, would it be superfluous to add that one of the first so-called “public/private partnerhsips” that BPL president has recommended for the BPL to be pursuing manifested itself in the form of the BPL partnering to promote to local school children Ratner’s Nets at his Atlantic Yards “Barclays” arena?

Back to gossip our column Hedda Hopper voice: We have a page up with more about the BPL trustees and the BPL’s senior officers including well worth reviewing bio of Linda Johnson,  Ms. Johnson started at the BPL in July 2010.  At her first meeting with the BPL board Ms. Johnson told the board how the BPL's real estate plans were her priority and not long thereafter reminded the BPL to remember that their goal was to lock the next mayor (whoever was successor to Bloomberg) into the real estate plans that were secretly underway.

Prior relationship: Linda Johnson with billionaire Leonard Lauder.

Often noted is that until December 2013 Johnson was dating another very wealthy man from a big company, Leonard Lauder, with plans to marry that were broken off just before the scheduled ceremony.  The New York Post states that they had been dating since 2012.  The Times says they were engaged in 2013.  (The relationship reportedly began after Lauder’s first wife Evelyn died in 2011.)  Leonard Lauder's very politically active brother Ron Lauder, also a famously wealthy billionaire was involved in clearing the prohibitions that allowed Bloomberg to get his third term.

The Pierhouse development offers extraordinary views of the New York’s harbor and the lower Manhattan skyline.  What allows it to manage it to do so involves, to an extent, the interposition by which the Pierhouse is grabbing views that were previously available from the Brooklyn Heights promenade and no longer are.  That raises an overall question about who gets the benefit when public assets are usurped for private benefit . . 

Above: Luxury NY Harbor and Manhattan skyline views offered, respectively by Pierhouse where Bruce and Linda bought a condo and by the luxury tower replacing Brooklyn's second biggest library that they were involved in selling off.

The luxury tower now replacing the downtown Heights Business, Career and Education Library that will now dominate the sky of historic Brooklyn Heights is, similarly to the Pierhouse, advertising stunning views.   Those views likewise include sweeping views of the harbor and the downtown Manhattan skyline.  And, as that luxury tower looks down on the much shorter federal courthouse across that way (that, with some success, was challenged for being too tall) it is worthwhile to remember that the spectacular views offered to residents of that tower are based on what the public sacrificed.  We mean by that not only the surrender of the skies of over historic Brooklyn Heights, but the sacrifice of a major library that was recently thoroughly renovated and upgraded to be state-of-the-art and one of the best in the BPL system.

If you are benefitting from the views in either of these developments you are unlikely to have second thoughts about any diminishment of the public realm by which those views may have been achieved.  However, like Bruce and Linda, you may have to keep buying new apartments, whatever has just been built, to stay ahead, and keep you back turned on the losses the public realm is suffering. . .   But the option of continually buying new apartments affording the latest edition of a good view may be something that only those who remain wealthy will be able to afford– That's true; Isn’t it? . .

. . . In that case, if you are benefitting from these newly marketed views, you might indeed actually have second thoughts about the diminishment of the public realm that made it all possible.  That’s because, like Bruce and Linda, your ongoing participation in that diminishment is vital your staying one step ahead on the treadmill.

(BTW: For those who may be confused seeing recent pictures of Mr. Ratner, he has recently shed a great deal of weight.)

NYPL Announces Its Intention To Sell Inwood Library (Enlarged and renovated in 2001) For Redevelopment- Is This What Gets Called a “Robin Hood” Deal These Days?

Our Facebook post about Inwood Library sale and Manhattan Community Board 12

INWOOD LIBRARY FOR SALE?: IT WAS STANDING ROOM ONLY JANUARY 4th as the sale for redevelopment was announced.

This page will be updated.

This is a recent Facebook Post with some more recent information.

The Inwood community has posted a video (on January 29th) of neighborhood residents confronting library selling officials at the library about the sale.

Citizens Defending Libraries has a January 26, Facebook post with updating information about respecting confirmation that the local city councilman Ydanis Rodriguez decided to back the sale of the library before the public knew about it or even had a chance to give him any insight or feedback into what the community's own view of the subject might be.

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer standing next to City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez in blue suit where he has come to even to promote the sale of the Inwood Library.  The man with the folded arms on Gale Brewer's other side is from de Blasio's HPD, also there to promote the sale of the Inwood Library.

Ditto on Gale Brewer dittoing library sales- same info as caption above.

Another crucial elected official disappointing library defenders at this point is Borough President Gale Brewer who showed up at the library alongside of City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez to indicate that she is generally supportive of the sale!

Now as Gale Brewer stands condoningly by, she, as borough president, has two Manhattan libraries suffering these such sales, the snuffing out of SIBL, the central destination Science, Industry, and Business Library at 34th Street (new for $100 million in 1996) with the total elimination of the Science portion of that library (in the science-annihilating age of Trump?) and the complete elimination of collection of science books!  SIBL is being sold for a suspiciously low amount.  Its sale is also connected to an overall library shrinkage affecting the Mid-Manhattan Library with a wholesale elimination of books.

The NYPL has now announced the Inwood Library in its sights for a disruptive sale for redevelopment.

Sale of the Inwood Library for redevelopment is being sprung on the community. The community members present at a January 4th Community Board committee meeting, just catching up with things, were pretty angry. The NYPL is aiming for quick low-on-the-radar pass of the plans by the community furnishing it with very constrained ability to comment- two Charrettes before the end of the month:

    Wednesday, January 25th (4:00-8:00pm), and

    Saturday, January 28th (10am-2:00pm)

which the NYPL will then reinterpret as blessing their plans (including, they indicated there may be a possible override to increase the zoning).

Interestingly, learning from the Sunset Park Library sale in Brooklyn, the NYPL and HPD are saying that they have already picked a partner to work with (board members include the Donnell-connected Starwood head, Goldman Sachs, the Related Companies), but, even so, that they will only officially award development to their development partner after a formal RFP.. .. ?

Sound good to you? . . . . Right!  (That’s sarcasm.)

The Inwood Library is a very nice, highly used, very functional, three story library that was expanded and renovated in 2001.* (January 4th the NYPL misleadingly stated that it hadn't been renovated for 30 years.) It is next to two large schools. These plans would take the library out of commission (Donnell, sold in 2007 took nine years and the NYPL still doesn’t expect to replace the teen center until 2020) and then make it unexpandable in the bottom of a privately-owned residential building.

(*  This information coming officially from the NYPL is inaccurate, according to a neighborhood resident communicating with us, who says that the last renovations of the Inwood library were even more recent than 2001.)

Interestingly, even though NYPL officials said that they were appearing before the community board members that night to make sure that the public knew about these rushed charrettes, there was only on small almost impossible to find announcement about the community board meeting in the library itself that did not state the purpose of the meeting and also did not tell people about the upcoming charrettes they are supposedly trying to publicize.

click to enlarge- Do you feel informed about the library sell off?  All the library patrons we spoke to about it were entirely surprised.

The only real coverage (and it was good coverage from our standpoint) was in DNAInfo:

    •    DNAInfo: Inwood Library to Be Sold to Developer for Affordable Housing, City Says,  By Carolina Pichardo, January 6, 2017 (Comments are possible)

Officials announced that the city is planning to sell the property to a developer who would build an apartment building, the height of which is not yet determined, in collaboration with the New York Public Library, HPD and anti-poverty nonprofit The Robin Hood Foundation.

* * * *

The surprise announcement angered many locals at the CB12 meeting who said they're frustrated that the city is moving forward with the plan so quickly, and that most pieces appear to already be in place before the public hearings.

"I'm wondering how constrained the whole concept of the workshop is going to be, whether you already have the idea that this is going to be affordable housing... you mentioned that you have a partner and I didn't hear anything about possible competitive bid or other possible partners," said Michael White, founder of Citizens Defend Libraries.

"Robin Hood sounds like a great name, and I'm sure you guys do a lot of good things, but I look at your board and I see Starwood, which was involved in the sell-off of the Donnell Library, I see Goldman [Sachs], which is involved in selling off libraries, and I see Related Companies, which get a lot of favors. I don't know that I would pick Robin Hood to slice-and-dice my library," White said. "If you're going to do just two sessions, it sounds like you already have an idea and you just want to do some rubber stamping."

The CEO of Starwood is a member of Robin Hood's board of directors, and the CEOs of Goldman Sachs and Related Companies are members of its advisory board, according to the nonprofit's website.

White, who has worked with communities in Sunset Park and Brooklyn Heights when they went through similar development projects with local libraries, said the project is basically "giving the library away to developers."

* * *

The current Inwood Library is one of the most heavily used locations in Manhattan and one of the few libraries open seven days a week, with enhanced services, programs and hours, officials said.

* * *

White accused the city of going "through the motions" to make it seem like they got input.


“Basically, they’re letting the public know ‘we’re selling the library and we want to know what you want after we sell it. It’s not ‘should we sell the library, or preserve plans to enlarge it in the future?” White said.

White said the city faced a lot of pushback from the community after it sold a Brooklyn Heights library to developer Hudson Companies for $52 million after critics accused Mayor Bill de Blasio of supporting the deal because of donations his campaign received from the development company.

We have a post up on Facebook and have Tweeted about the sale.  There is a Facebook discussion of the sale on another post by TAkeBackNYC.  BTW:  Interestingly, the "Robin Hood Foundation" gets mention in this week's New York Magazine cover story about the ascendancy to power or Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.

There is the sort of quick non-coverage, mostly a press release pass along, that we’d regularly expect of such transactions by Curbed and the Real Deal, although Curbed mentions and connects this deal to the community’s recent rejection (its “fierce opposition”) of the upzoning of a neighboring site (but bot the Curbed and Real Deal articles do  mention the possible upzoning this could bring to the library site-  comments on both articles are possible):

    •    Curbed: City officials push affordable housing redevelopment for Inwood library- After recent rejection from City Council for a nearby site, the city explores its options, by Ameena Walker Jan 5, 2017

    •    Real Deal: In wake of failed Inwood rezoning, city returns with new affordable housing pitchDe Blasio administration wants to bring "100% affordable" apartments to the site of a library, by Will Parker, January 05, 2017.

Click to enlarge

Something of real estate interest likely going on here that Curbed and the Real Deal didn't mention and make explicit is that, after an import of FAR (and the site already has a playground running track included in it that will help it hit a high FAR), there could be a mayoral override of the current zoning, that would be a camel's nose under the tent in a neighborhood where the city has already been maneuvering for more increased zoning.  Adjacent to the library there is a succession of one-story buildings (with some recent transactions where they traded hands).  It is easy to import the FAR from all of those sites to the library to get a tower, or the existing properties there may themselves get sacrificed to redevelopment.

The Inwood community can learn from what's happened and gone on before.  As with Brooklyn Heights, the former Donnell, Sunset Park, anytime you sell off the library land and put a replacement library in the bottom of a privately-owned residential building you can never enlarge or expand it as the community grows afterward. . because it's a problem that the building is privately owned, and because it's a problem with the building being residential. - - - Closing this library, next to two large schools for `redevelopment' is inherently disruptive. Donnell started shutting down at the end of 2007. It's inadequate replacement didn't open until this summer 2016. The NYPL hopes to open the replacement for what was the newly renovated Donnell teen center in 2020. - - - When you turn libraries into real estate deals the priorities become those of the real estate industry, not the library patrons. ERGO: This plan to let the public comment on a done deal where the priorities have already been skewed.

One useful reference is this statement of principles that dates back to the proposal that the Sunset Park Library  be sold for 'redevelopment' and similarly turned into a multi-use project:  Proposed Statement of Principles Concerning Any Possible Redevelopment of Library-- Sunset Park Branch - .

If it really makes sense to tear down recently enlarged, renovated and very functional libraries for redevelopment, then what actually makes sense is to build the replacement library in a free standing enlargeable building first and then move it.  That way you avoid disruption, down time and bait and switch deals.

Politics?:  Gale Brewer as Manhattan Borough President has very key say-so over this Manhattan library along with SIBL, another Manhattan library she is letting go down the drain.  On the immediate front line is Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez.  From talking to Russell Murphy (rmurphy2[at]council.nuc.gov), his representative at the hearing, it sounds like Councilman Rodriguez is already warmed up and predisposed to favor sacrificing the library for development.  A word to those with less experience in these matters: The NYPL and library officials don't generally proceed with the unveiling of library sell-off unless Mayor de Blasio, the NYPL and the rest of the powers that be already believe they have bagged and tagged the pertinent elected officials, particularly the local city councilman, and have them on board.  (For instance, the deal could even go back to when the last upzoning was slain by the community's opposition.)

One reason the Community Board 12 meeting was crowded was because local residents had sent an email to members of the Facebook Inwood Community Group (including):

Will we be losing our well loved and well used library? Because our community doesn't show up represent push back special interest. If they are willing to tear down our library, where will it end?

Will we let the city build questionable "affordable housing" on the Inwood Library site? I say NO not on my watch..... . . .

* * * **

"This is so unacceptable I can't put into the words . . .

. . .   it is urgent that as many Inwood residents who have time show up at this meeting in strong support of our library, and way of life...........