Open Letter and Invitation To Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders For Event About Protecting Public Assets At Tillary Clinton Library

July 10, 2015

Mr. Bernie Sanders
Bernie 2016
Campaign Office
P.O. Box 905
Burlington, Vermont 05402

Dear Bernie Sanders,

This will follow up on our previous efforts reaching out to you and your campaign.  Citizens Defending Libraries would like to hold an event with you.

Everyone understands that we face a crisis of growing income inequality.  We invite you to join with us to decry the way that escalating income and wealth inequality are leading to attacks on our public assets, presenting a viscous cycle where deals to sell them off are stacked to favor those at the top.

We believe that a broad swath of our public resources are in similar jeopardy, libraries being just one example but suggest that the best place to hold a rally would be outside the Brooklyn Heights Library, Brooklyn's central destination downtown library on Cadman Plaza West at the corner of Tillary and Clinton.  It stands next to Hillary Clinton’s national campaign headquarters.

In order to hand this library off to a developer who wants build a tower of luxury condominiums to take its place, the library, last substantially expanded and fully upgraded in 1993 at appreciable public expense (it is actually five years newer than the building in which the Hillary Clinton headquarters sit), is proposed to be sold for a fraction of its public value and traded for a shrunken “replacement” library of just one-third size.. .  This when the use of New York City libraries that democratically serve everybody is way up, circulation of physical books in particular, libraries cost little to fund, and the city is wealthy and growing.

We greatly look forward to hearing from you and holding this event soon.

Sincerely,

Carolyn E. McIntyre

CC: Campaign Staff

Handout Number 1 For July 6, 2014 Brooklyn Community Board 2 Land Use Committee Meeting- Let's Get the Record Straight! Concerns Re Proposed Library Sale+Shrinkage To be Voted On

People formed a long line to excoriate Brooklyn's CB2 Land Use Committee after its vote at a hastily scheduled meeting the Monday after 4th of July weekend to approve the sale and shrinkage of the central destination Brooklyn Heights Library in Downtown Brooklyn.  No member of the public attending the meeting spoke spoke any words of approval for the committee's action.

This page will be updated.

Here is one of the handouts that Citizens Defending Libraries distributed to Brooklyn Community Board 2 Land Use Committee Meeting before it voted July 6, 2015.

Following the text of the handout is a link to television coverage of the evening's proceedings.  Links to our own videos will follow in updates to this post. 

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Let’s Get the Record Straight!

AND, Let’s Hope That Community Board 2 Doesn’t Vote To Recommend Selling And Shrinking One of Brooklyn’s Most Important Libraries Based On a Record of Inaccuracies From The BPL (compounding the problem of the BPL’s withholding information)

That said, there are so many concerns that apply to selling and shrinking the Brooklyn Heights central destination downtown library:

1.    The mistake of shrinking this library (last enlarged with public expense and sacrifice Oct.1993) down to just one-third size* can never be corrected, nor can the “replacement” library, stuck in the bottom of a luxury residential tower, ever grow with the neighborhood, CBD, borough or city.  Though this shrinkage is to a preordained size no replacement library has been designed and no estimation at all has been done of how many books it should hold.

        (* 63,000 square feet to just 21,000 square feet.)

2.    The BPL is selling a sturdy, readily adaptable library in good shape, together with its land and development rights worth over $100 million to the public in order to net next to nothing in a transaction that may even incur a net cash loss.  Further, there is no assurance that the paltry sums, if any, gleaned from the sale, all going to the city, would ever subsequently go to libraries.  Libraries, highly valued by the public, cost relatively little to fund, but this sale is apt to encourage further underfunding like this.

3.    This sale would sacrifice one more public asset (an education-supporting one at that) to build yet another new, huge residential tower that would further burden the public infrastructure such as PS8, already at 140% capacity.

4.    The gentrifying aspects of this project are unmistakable with a public asset democratically serving everyone equally being shut down, lower income patrons coming to the neighborhood kicked out, and so-called “affordable” housing units built “poor door” style at a far remove from Brooklyn’s burgeoning downtown and upper crust Brooklyn Heights.

5.    The developer has refused to say how much of a payday the private Saint Ann’s School is getting from the public’s sale and shrinkage of the library, because that’s a “private” transaction, even though it’s driving this public one.  Shouldn’t Saint Ann’s be paying the BPL?  (It may likely get more from this sale than the BPL is getting.)

6.    This sale sets the unfortunate precedent for serially underfunding and selling off other libraries (per the BPL strategic real estate plan) and other public assets (like public housing) setting a template for how public assets can be picked off one-by-one.  This developer is making hundreds of millions of dollars: The incentives for other such deals will always be there.  If we can’t stop them at libraries . . .

7.    It’s improper that while the developer’s application for this project was pending Bill de Blasio was taking money sent to him by its development team, in his words: “lurking right behind the curtain . .  very anxious to get their hands on these valuable properties.”

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This set of images are from Brooklyn News 12 video linked to below.

Below, just before the link for the VIDEO, is the "Library-Squasher" image held up here- You can click to enlarge

Brooklyn News12 VIDEO: Plan to sell Brooklyn library discussed at CB 2 meeting, July 6, 2015.



Before the committee voted to approve the sale of the library it demonstrated an abject lack of knowledge about the project by proposing several 100% feckless possible modifications, like requiring that $2 million from the sale proceeds be set aside for the "replacement" library, whether this would be for maintenance and operation expenses or capital expenditures was not thought out, and irrelevant anyway: The city gives the library virtually all its funds and could simply require the immediate exhaustion of the fund as a predicate to advancing any more money. . .  In other words- "Poof; Now you see it, now you don't"!

The only substantive suggestion the committee began to venture was to require that the new branch library be at least the same size as the existing one.  Had the committee done so the BPL and developer would have been hoisted on the pitard of their own rhetoric where they have often obfuscated by saying that the one-third size 21,000 square foot library they propose to replace the current 63,000 square foot library is equivalent to the portion of the library now allocatable to branch functions.  It isn't!  Approximately, 36,000 square feet is allocable to the branch library.  Another approximately 27,000 square feet is theoretically allocable to Business and Career functions of the library.  These functions are theoretically being sent to the more remote, less accessible Grand Army Plaza library where no new space will be added and there are no plans about how to the functions will be accommodated.. . .  In other words, once again- "Poof; Now you see it, now you don't"!

The committee was obviously flailing about helplessly with a total lack of knowledge about how much they were actually shrinking the library.  Proposing to keep even the branch library at the same size would have killed the developer's deal with the BPL.  CB2 District Manager Rob Perris stepped into the breach to neuter the committee's nascent proposal, dropping delicately phrased hints warning that the BPL was not using conventional measurements in all its various representation to the public, press and the committee about library size.. . . That others would measure things differently.

In the end, what the committee actually actually approved and recommended about maintaining a minimum library size was so bollixed up as to be incomprehensible, the end result probably being that some committee members, so very confused about the facts anyway ,might have felt consoled that they actually did something like what they started out to, but with the language sufficiently tangled that that Perris and lawyers will simply choose to interpret to the developer's benefit when the dust settles.  


One important reason the committee vote went the way it did is that the Brooklyn Heights Association oddly, very suspectly, inconsistently, and probably very improperly advocated that result.  See:  Sunday, July 5, 2015, How Self-Contradictory Can The Brooklyn Heights Association Be As It Advocates Sale And Shrinkage of The Brooklyn Heights Central Destination Downtown Library?

Judy Stanton simultaneously a CB2 Land Use Committee member and employee of the Brooklyn Heights Association as its Executive Director voted for the sale and shrinkage of the library although there were members of the public arguing that to do so she was furthering a highly problematic conflict of interest situation.  Irene Janner, also both a CB2 Land Use Committee member and employee of the Brooklyn Heights Association, had spoken out against the proposal during the committee's June 17th deliberations on  the subject, but this evening she was absent, reported by Ms. Stanton, her supervisor, to be "on vacation."

Here is coverage of the evening in the Brooklyn Eagle:  CB2 committee approves sale of Brooklyn Heights Library, with caveats, By Mary Frost, July 7, 2015 - 3:38pm

See also handout Number 2 about the inadequate consideration of the environmental impact of the project.

See also: Handout Number 3 For July 6, 2014 Brooklyn Community Board 2 Land Use Committee Meeting- Come To The Library Seeking Truth NOT Treasure.

Handout Number 2 For July 6, 2014 Brooklyn Community Board 2 Land Use Committee Meeting- Important Memo Re: Library Environmental Impact Statement Documents

IMPORTANT MEMO RE: LIBRARY EIS

July 6, 2015

TO: MEMBERS OF COMMUNITY BOARD 2’s LAND USE COMMITTEE

FROM: CONCERNED COMMUNITY RESIDENTS & CITIZENS DEFENDING LIBRARIES

RE:  IMPORTANT ISSUES SURROUNDING THE LIBRARY ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT

INTRODUCTION: after careful scrutiny of the above, it is our belief that construction of this large real estate project will harm the downtown footprint and will indeed have negative impacts on traffic, transit and pedestrians, air quality and noise.  The 2004 Final Environmental Impact Statement “FEIS” (on which much of this EIS is based) suggested possible steps to mitigate expected impacts on the environment but the FEIS greatly understated the number of luxury and market rate housing units that would be included within the downtown Brooklyn development area. Moreover, the outdated 2004 FEIS, based on hearings held 10 years ago is not “a realistic assessment of the burdens being imposed on the Downtown Brooklyn communities given the extraordinary development that has already occurred in the last 10 years. Tens of thousands of new residents strain an already overcrowded school system, park system, transit system and police and fire departments.” (see Supreme Court of the State of New York case in the matter of FUREE, then Councilperson Letitia James, NYS Assembly Member Walter Mosley, et al v. Bloomberg, NYC EDC, HPD, et al 5/01/2013).

The massive development occurring in downtown Brooklyn exceeds anything contemplated by the 2004 FEIS. According to The Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, “since 2006 Downtown Brooklyn has experienced $4.9 billion in private investment, including 7,111 residential units, 1,570 hotel rooms, 1.4 million square feet of retail space.” See

http//assets.downtownbrooklyn.com/maps/Development-Map-Mar-2013.pdf

By refusing to take a hard look at this project based on post-March 2004 development in Downtown Brooklyn, a Supplemental EIS is warranted and any go-ahead should be put on hold until the obligations of such a review is undertaken. Here is just a brief overview of some impacts associated with this development:

CONSTRUCTION: 40  MONTHS: DEMOLITION, EXCAVATION & FOUNDATION, SUPERSTRUCTURE, EXTERIORS, SITE-WORK, INTERIORS & FINISHING.

·         Construction  allowed 7 a.m. – 6 p.m. on weekdays; weekend work may also be required; curb-lane & sidewalk closures would be required to allow for deliveries and laydown of construction materials. Trucks delivering materials will enter primarily via CADMAN PLAZA WEST WITH CLOSED-OFF AREAS for concrete pour and steel delivery; (Would cars, taxis, etc. use Clark & Henry to circumvent the closing of Cadman?)

·         Estimated Trucks per day: 15 for demolition; 25-35 for excavation; 10-35 for superstructure; 15-25 for interiors and finishing; 35 trucks per day when activities overlap;

·         “Peak number of deliveries would occur from the 4^th quarter of 2016 to the 4^th quarter of 2018 with 35 trucks per day. . . .note the estimated 35 trucks per day is not the maximum number of construction trucks anticipated for each individual construction stage” (from Attachment L)

TRANSPORTATION PLANNING & ASSUMPTIONS: a quantified traffic analysis was not required according to the EIS.

Trip generation factors for the proposed project “were developed based on information from the 2004 Downtown Brooklyn Development FEIS and U.S. Census Bureau 2008-2012 Five Year Estimates – Journey-to-Work Data and CEQR Technical Manual. Simply put, vehicle occupancies are from 2008-2012 U.S. Census and taxi numbers used are from the 2004 FEIS.

AIR QUALITY (FROM THE EIS): “the proposed project would implement an emissions reduction program too minimize the effects of the proposed construction activities on the surrounding community.”  This is not spelled out or fully addressed.

NOISE & VIBRATION (FROM THE EIS): “some project-specific noise control measures would be used to reduce the amount of construction noise.”  This is not spelled out or fully addressed.

RODENT CONTROL (FROM THE EIS): “ construction contracts may include provisions for rodent, mouse, rat control . . . during construction, the contractor would carry out a maintenance program as necessary. . .rodent control in a manner not hazardous to the general public, domestic animals. “  This is not spelled out – what EPA registered rodenticides would be permitted?

EXCAVATION & FOUNDATION (FROM THE EIS): “excavation and foundation activities would involve the use of pile drivers, bulldozers, bobcats, loaders, compactors, generators, compressors. . .this stage is anticipated to take approximately 15 months to complete.” This machinery usage is not specific and is not quantified in a noise analysis.

PARKING (FROM THE EIS): “ number of workers would be 63 a day and based on 2000 Census data, it is anticipated that 50% of construction workers would communte to the development site by private autos . . . .generate a parking demand of 27 parking spaces. . . .workers expected to park in off-street spaces.”

NOISE (FROM THE EIS): “ impacts on community noise levels during construction of the proposed building could result from noise from construction equipment operation and from construction and delivery vehicles traveling to and from the construction site. . . .The New York City Noise Control Code requires the adoption and implementation of a noise mitigation plan for each construction site, limits construction absent special approvals to weekdays and sets noise limits for specific pieces of construction equipment.” No mitigation plan has been thoroughly explored or explained.

None of the attachments to the EIS adequately assess the potential impacts of this proposed project including transportation, hazardous materials, pollutants analysis (carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, respirable particulate matter), pedestrian operations, and the building’s mechanical system (heating, ventilation and air conditioning). On the latter, the EIS states that the aforementioned systems “would be designed to meet all applicable noise regulations.” Yet there is no further information or details on what kind of system would be used.

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In connection with the July 6, 2014 meeting see also:

Handout Number 1 For July 6, 2014 Brooklyn Community Board 2 Land Use Committee Meeting- Let's Get the Record Straight! Concerns Re Proposed Library Sale+Shrinkage To be Voted On

Handout Number 3 For July 6, 2014 Brooklyn Community Board 2 Land Use Committee Meeting- Come To The Library Seeking Truth NOT Treasure

Handout Number 3 For July 6, 2014 Brooklyn Community Board 2 Land Use Committee Meeting- Come To The Library Seeking Truth NOT Treasure

Truth Park at the north end of the library where an admonition about TRUTH and TREASURE appear

On the north face of the Tillary Clinton Brooklyn Heights Library (facing the corner park- We like to call it “Truth Park”) we find inscribed this admonition to come to the library to pursue TRUTH not TREASURE:

“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”

At the last (5/18) BPL design “Charette”/Charade to sell and shrink the library none of the multitude of architects or BPL representatives at the tables knew of this admonition, or even knew how many feet of book shelf space was at the library for before and after comparisons. 

* * * *
In connection with the July 6, 2014 meeting see also:

Handout Number 1 For July 6, 2014 Brooklyn Community Board 2 Land Use Committee Meeting- Let's Get the Record Straight! Concerns Re Proposed Library Sale+Shrinkage To be Voted On

Handout Number 2 For July 6, 2014 Brooklyn Community Board 2 Land Use Committee Meeting- Important Memo Re: Library Environmental Impact Statement Documents

Where Is The Transparency?- Handout to Community Board 2 Land Use Committee the day of its June 17, 2015 Hearing About Whether To Sell and Shrinks The Brooklyn Heights Library

This was handed out by Citizens Defending Libraries at the Brooklyn Community Board 2 Land Use Committee meeting and public hearing about whether to sell and shrink a major publicly owned asset, the Brooklyn Heights Library, the central destination library in downtown Brooklyn.  It was the first ever public hearing about whether to sell and shrink an important New York City library.

* * * *

Where Is The Transparency?

Brooklyn’s Community Board 2 is being asked to vote and irrevocably shrink a (recently enlarged) major New York City library blindfolded.  It’s been furnished with misinformation and misrepresentations. . . .  AND here are just some of things that are unknown because the BPL is deeply non-transparent about this hand-off of a juicy real estate deal to a connected developer:

    1.    The true and complete costs to the public of selling and shrinking this library as proposed.  The building would cost at least $60 Million to build from scratch and together with the land and right to expand the public uses on the site is assuredly worth more than $100 million, but the BPL may net virtually nothing or even wind up in a financial hole selling it.

    2.    The “strategic real estate plan” formulated going back to 2007 (likewise the “Revson Study”) that would tell the public what libraries will returned into real estate hand-out next.

    3.    Communications between the BPL and the Department of Design and Construction that contradict what the BPL is now saying about there being a highly inflated cost to repair the air conditioning at the library.

    4.    Whether, as seems to be the case, Saint Ann's, a private school, is pocketing more money from this transaction than the BPL will net. The school is now taking all cask rather than getting a 20,000 square foot school theater (worth maybe $42 million?).   Does CB2 know?

    5.    Information about the historic nature of the building including BPL communications with Landmarks.

    6.    How much the BPL is spending on high-priced lobbyist and PR firms to push for the sale of libraries.

    7.    Information about book counts: what they have been, what they are now and what they are intended to be in the future.  For instance, the BPL and the architect representing it, and the developer in this regard have not been able to state what the book shelf capacity of the entire Brooklyn Heights Library is or what it will be reduced to in the future.

And as Mr. de Balsio said when he was running for mayor (July 12, 2013):

“It’s public land and public facilities and public value under threat. . . and once again we see, lurking right behind the curtain, real estate developers who are very anxious to get their hands on these valuable properties”

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

Did you catch this?

An Architect Works With a Source of Inspiration: His Father, by Matt A.V. Chaban, June 15, 2015.

It’s a puff piece about architect Jonathan Marvel that appeared in the New York Times, perfectly timed to blunt some bad news about projects Mr. Marvel is the designer of.

And in the background for the big photograph accompanying the piece (did you notice?) like so many of these puff pieces: Books, books, books!  Because books are reassuring.  Books make you trust people.  Books are read by thoughtful people, cultured people, people who know things and have studied things.  Yes, how marvelous to have books, and how marvelous when you want to present people as trustworthy, to present them as book people. . .  present them as people who love and want to live around books. . .  People who, when they want to let the world know who they are think its best to be photographed in front of books!

We’ll get back to the subject of books here shortly, because appearances can be deceiving or at least highly ironic.

The two projects about which Marvel urgently needed criticism muffled or distracted from don’t lie very far from each other.  Each can also be cited as an example of overbuilding.

Marvel's two projects: Blocking the view of the Brooklyn Bridge and squashing out a library

Here’s the bad news with respect to each:

    •    On June 12, 2015 (reported by the Times June 14, 2015- the day before the puff piece) a judge of the Sate Supreme Court, Justice Lawrence S. Knipel ruled that construction of Marvel’s  Pierhouse, a hotel and condominium complex could continue even though it obscures historic views of the Brooklyn Bridge from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade.  The building is at least 30 feet in height over what the public was expecting based on negotiated understandings of how development in the park was to be restricted to preserve and respect those views.  We’ve been to public meetings where representatives of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation (BBPC) explained how this extra development disrespecting the understood limits occurred.  The explanation involves an intricate dance where with a pro-development bias the BBPC and those working with it for the developer two-stepped, figuring that the BBPC was exempt from city zoning laws when it was helpful, and referred to following zoning laws when it was helpful.  It is difficult to believe that the architect was not knowingly complicit in this dance that came out with the extra development a developer would want while breaching the understanding that the community expected to followed about protecting the historic views.    

    •    On June 15, 2015, (the day after the puff piece) there was an information dump on the public showing Marvel’s new designed for the 38-story luxury condominium tower that would replace, stomping down to one-third its previous size, the Brooklyn Heights Library, Brooklyn's central destination library in Downtown Brooklyn on Cadman Plaza West at Tillary and Clinton.  The information dump was two days before the start of the ULURP (Uniform Land Use Review Procedure), a first hearing about whether the city should sell and shrink this valuable public library property getting virtually nothing in return.  The proposal is to sell and shrink the library (which can never be enlarged ever again, like it was in 1993), without even designing a new library first to figure out just how cramped the result might be.  But Marvel, the architect working for the developer who wants the site and the library shrunk did lead some Charrettes (Charades) for the BPL about how to shrink the library down design-wise.  More on the blindness with which the pro-development Marvel was willing to blithely proceed on this shortly.

Both of these Marvel projects above are the subject of petitions opposing the senseless excess and plunder of the public commons involved.  They are respectively:

    •    The petition of Save the View Now challenging the illegal over-building is here: Return the construction of the Pierhouse in Brooklyn Bridge Park to be consistent with the plans approved in 2005.

    •    The petition against these deals selling and shrinking NYC libraries is here: Mayor de Blasio: Rescue Our Libraries from Developer Destruction.

It turns out that Marvel’s architects completely ignored the entire question of book capacity when it came to conducted three public charrettes/charades about how best to shrink the library down to one-third size and it proposed tentative designs for the replacement library without knwing how many books the current library holds or how many it might be good for the new library to hold.

This is despite the fact that the Marvel architects acknowledge that at these charrette/charades the public clearly expressed that what it wanted in the new library was “Books, Books. Books.”   

The following email to Marvel documents that fact in self explanatory fashion.

Email from Citizens Defending Library Co-Founder Michael D. D. White to architect Jonathan Marvel respecting how many books the current central destination library in downtown Brooklyn is designed to hold vs. how many books the drastically shrunken library he is designing would hold.

    Mon, May 25, 2015 4:15 pm

    Jonathan,

    At the design charrette run by Marvel last Monday (the 18th) the Marvel representatives seemed largely unfamiliar about certain things and, for instance, in particular, how many linear feet of book shelf space capacity the current entirety of the 63,000 square foot library including the two half floors underground has vs. how many linear feet of book shelf space capacity the proposed editions of the Marvel design fielded that night were conceptualized to accommodate.

    I thought all the Marvel representatives, each and every one of them, were all going to tell me they didn't know the answer, until Guido at the last table said that he knew the answer and he said that the existing 63,000 foot library on all four floors had 4,500 linear feet of book shelf space and that the designs presented furnished 6,000 linear feet of book shelf space.  I told him that this seemed implausible to me, especially that the entire 63,000 of buildings space including the basement storage areas has only 4,500 linear feet of book shelf space.  I emphasized that the question was linear feet of book shelf space shelf capacity, not the number of number of linear feet of actual books, reduced now that the BPL has been getting rid of books.

    Further, since we were clear that we were talking about the all of the entire 63,000 feet of existing library space, there should be no doubt that we were not asking Guido to play games and supply the result of a weird or self-serving allocation of shelf space to only a portion of the library such as to the so-called "branch" functions vs. business and career functions.  We also are aware and made clear that not all the book shelf space is in the public areas, so we were asking about ALL the shelf space wherever it was, underground, in staff or conference areas.

    I will withhold comment on whether we think the number of linear feet provided for in the new designs were envisioned feasibly or workably or how many feet there actually appear to be.  Among other things, readable scales were not provided that night, and things appeared cramped.

    As none of the other tables or Marvel representatives that night had the information about the amount of relative shelf space, as things got underway, I conveyed Guido's information to them all together with my misgivings about its plausibility.  Interestingly, at my table the head librarian argued for the rest of our table to believe the information furnished by Marvel via Guido.

    Frankly, we find Guido's information about shelf space suspect and inconsistent with what we know about the 63,000 square foot library at the corner of Tillary Clinton.  Nevertheless, I am writing this email to ask that you confirm (or correct) the information Guido furnished at the design event hoping that you will appreciate the opportunity to do so.

Marvel didn’t respond to the email, but later, at a May 27, 2015 Brooklyn Community Board 2 Youth and Education Committee meeting where the BPL and Marvel were making a presentation to the committee pitching for a sell and shrinkage of the library the architects were asked again to state the book capacity of the current library vs. the proposed shrunken library and this time flatly admitted that they didn’t know what that was.  Instead, they offered that it was information that they could sometime obtain and make available.  They haven’t yet. . . 

They haven’t furnished the information which means that Community Board 2 is being asked to approve the library sale and shrinkage without this basic information about the library’s core function.

Mr. Guido Hartray’s representation that the whole 63,000 square foot library had only 4,500 linear feet of shelf capacity amounts to a representation that the library has shelf capacity for maybe only 32,400 or 33,000 books at most.  Yet, in 1992, with a rapidly growing collection that the library was expanding by one-third to accommodate better, the library had 130,000 books plus substantial other materials so the shelf capacity then (and probably added to later as well), should have likely have exceeded at least18,000 linear feet by that year.

The well-timed puff piece tells us cheerfully that working on projects like these two in Brooklyn* Jonathan Marvel’s practice “has already doubled in size to 65 designers, with no space left to grow” to accommodate Mr. Marvel and his books!

(* Relevant to each of these projects is the fact that Marvel, along with his library development team partner of the library have been sending money to Mayor de Blasio.  See: Saturday, June 6, 2015, WNYC Reports Mayor de Blasio’s “Furiously Raising Funds”- Including From Developers “Lurking Behind The Curtain” of Library Real Estate Sales- And WNYC’s Money?)  

“No space left to grow”?  Oh my!  That means that Mr. Marvel finds himself in pretty much in the same spot as he is putting the library he is shrinking in. . .  The shrunken library, stuck at the bottom of a residential building under a stack of luxury condominiums will never be able to grow again afterwards.  As noted, the last time the library needed to grow, at appreciable public expense and inconvenient was with its expansion completed in 1993.  The library won’t be able to grow if this reverse-course shrinkage is a mistake, or because the city, borough, central baseness district or immediately surrounding neighborhood all grow at a fast rate (which they absolutely are doing).

So yes, it’s “marvelous” to have books and being pictured in front of them is a great strategy to encourage people to have good feelings about you. . . . But it doesn’t mean that the person photographed cares about and is dedicated to other people having books.  It doesn’t mean that although an architect undertakes to design a library (shrunken or not) that the architect cares on whit about that library having books.

By the way, Marvel Architects has only designed one library prior to this one.  It was hired to design that library back in the old era of libraries as we used to have them.

Click to enlarge and inspect book titles

In the photograph, most of the titles of the books in Mr. Marvel’s Library can be read.  The Brooklyn Heights downtown Brooklyn Library is a central destination library, at least the second most important in Brooklyn.  Want to guess how many of the titles in Mr. Marvel’s collection can be found in the library when you pop in to visit?  In fact, want to guess how many of these titles can be fund in the entire Brooklyn Public Library system now run by people who seem dedicated to getting rid of books?

Our Testimony and Report on City Council Hearing On Budget For NYC Libraries Held Monday, June 8, 2015 and Tuesday, June 9, 2015

This page will be updated.

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Testimony of Michael D. D. White below:

June 9, 2015

James G. Van Bramer, Chair
Committee on Cultural Affairs,
   Libraries and International Intergroup Relations
250 Broadway
New York, NY 10017

Re:    June 8th and 9th 2015, New York City Council Fiscal Year 2016 Executive Budget Hearing- Libraries, Mayor's FY '14 Preliminary Management Report and Agency Oversight Hearings

Dear Committee:           

I begin with a quote:

“It’s public land and public facilities and public value under threat. . . and once again we see, lurking right behind the curtain, real estate developers who are very anxious to get their hands on these valuable properties”

That’s the mayor speaking in 2013 as a candidate for election about the tragedy of selling off and shrinking our public libraries, transforming them into real estate deals that benefit developers, not the public.

“Real estate developers. .  lurking right behind the curtain . . . who are very anxious to get their hands on these valuable properties”?: The mayor knows whereof he speaks.  In 2013 Mr. de Blasio was being sent money by those involved in library sales, including the real estate development team seeking to turn the Brooklyn Heights library, Brooklyn’s central destination library on Cadman Plaza West at the corner of Tillary and Clinton, into a luxury tower.  The proposal involves a vastly shrunken so-called “replacement” library of minimal size.

It’s a deal modeled on and closely replicating the sale of the beloved Donnell Library, conceived of at the very same time.  There are links between the people conceiving these deals.

It makes no sense for the Mayor to be underfunding the libraries in a time of plenty, defying the advice of everyone, including the city’s daily newspapers, except to create an excuse to sell libraries.  But plundering these assets is costly to the public. 

With new revelations, the still uninvestigated money-losing Donnell sale is turning out to cost more than ever suspected.  If the NYPL had restored a full-scale Donnell Library after selling its site, it would have been deep in the hole with a net loss, a situation very comparable to the now proposed sale of the Brooklyn Heights Tillary Clinton Library.  But, additionally, Scott Sherman’s new book, “Patience and Fortitude- Power, Real Estate, and the Fight to Save a Public Library,” discloses that the NYPL spent almost $5 million to outfit the small, cramped temporary library filling in to replace the library since 2008.

That means that selling and shrinking down to 1/3-1/4 size a 97,000 square foot library across from MoMA, the NYPL netted less than $33 million.  That paltry figure does not involve subtracting out the additional millions that have been spent for high-priced consultants to tell the NYPL that their idiotic ideas were smart ones, nor the annual rental cost for the temporary replacement library starting with $850,000 in 2008. . . .  Those are escalating costs that sadly are still being incurred in today, even as you review the library’s budget.

The Brooklyn Heights central destination library is 63,000 feet of extraordinarily serviceable (and adaptable) square feet.  That includes two half floors of underground space that, similar to the 42nd Street Central Reference Library, were set up to hold books for easy on-the-spot retrieval.  To say that the building is sturdy is an understatement: When it was built, it was built with space set aside for a bomb shelter with the thought that people could go there to be protected against a nuclear attack.

The building was built in 1962 (at a cost in today’s dollars of about $20 million) and opened with a collection of 90,000 volumes.  In 1991 it was enlarged and upgraded (at a cost in today’s dollars of about $10 million).  Then, additionally, a reclamation of the space people once thought might be used as a bomb shelter added even more space for books.

All in all it is safe to say that with what the public has invested to build the building plus the value of the underlying land and potential future development and expansion rights the value of the building to the public is the neighborhood of about $85 million, perhaps closer to $100 million.  Yet this sale for shrinkage will net virtually nothing when all the costs are considered.  The Brooklyn Public library is stonewalling, refusing to reveal the costs.  The City Council lets it.

You should also pay attention to the unexpectedly high costs of removing books from libraries and storing them off-site.

The design of this Brooklyn Downtown Library and its limestone and red granite was admired with some fanfare as “handsome” when it was opened.  Because, like the Grand Army Plaza Library it is also the work of Francis Keally it is a complementary bookend to that admired library.  It is similarly eligible for landmarking. Francis Keally was once the president of the Municipal Art Society back when that was a vital organization.  He fought for preservation and good design.  In this situation he would also be fighting for common sense and against greed and corruption.

Sincerely,

Michael D. D. White
Citizens Defending Libraries

PS: I hereby incorporate by reference Citizens Defending Library’s previous testimony before the Council about the harm to the public of underfunding libraries, eliminating books and librarians, selling and shrinking libraries for real estate deals that benefit developers, not the public.  I specifically include that which you will find here:

    •    Tuesday, February 24, 2015, Report on Tuesday, February 24th City Council Hearing On Supporting Public Libraries in the City's Ten-Year Capital Plan Plus Testimony of Citizens Defending Libraries

    •     Tuesday, June 3, 2014, Report on Tuesday, June 3rd-9th City Council Hearing On Budget For NYC Libraries Plus Testimony of Citizens Defending Libraries       

    •     Wednesday, December 10, 2014, Report on Wednesday, December 10th City Council Hearing On Future of Capital Budget For NYC Libraries Plus Testimony of Citizens Defending Libraries

Additionally, I refer you (link provided below) to our web page about the upcoming June 17, 2015 hearing that will commence the process required to decide whether to sell and shrink the Brooklyn Heights Tillary Clinton Library.  This will be the first ever hearing on such a sale because one was not required or held with respect to Donnell, or the now besieged 34th Street Science, Industry and Business library.

    •     Brooklyn Community Board 2 Land Use Committee June 17, 2015: ULURP Hearing- First Hearing About Whether To Sell & Shrink Downtowns’s Brooklyn Heights Library (Tillary & Clinton)