Court Dismisses Library Lawsuit

Our current library is 63,000 square feet. The planned replacement library is only 26,600 square feet. Upon entry there will be 10,000 square feet with a mezzanine of 5,000 square feet. The rest is below ground. Our present library has two floors above ground with a total of 37,200 square feet. The two sub levels total just short of 26,000 square feet. Though the public does not have physical access to the sub levels, it has , upon request to a librarian, absolute access to all that is contained there. The two sub levels, until recently, contained a Federal Depository in addition to rare and precious books. The library has already moved out the Federal Depository. There is no information on where any of its other books are being stored, or whether they are being stored at all.

You won’t find reference to our library in the Department of Education budget since the decision to call upon their funds was given in mid-December, 2015 in the backroom deal between our councilman, Steve Levin and the developer, David Kramer, head of Hudson Companies. The public had no opportunity to weigh in on that compromise that pretended to give benefits to the public, when it was actually depriving them of their truly valuable asset, The Brooklyn Heights Library, and robbing the Department of Education of funds. That Department had never requested a STEAM program. There is an irony there. The city is willing to pay for a STEAM program, but it won’t use its funds to repair libraries. The STEAM program was part of the compromise that allows our current library to be destroyed. But the money from the city is not forthcoming to repair what needs repair in our library or in any other. This underfunding is intentional, meant specifically to support a plan going back to the Bloomberg administration We discovered this through Freedom of Information, when we requested 10 years worth of minutes from the BPL Trustees meetings. It was called The Strategic Real Estate Plan, intended to view libraries, particularly those on lucrative sites, to be regarded for real-estate development. The BPL would purposely defer maintenance and its costs for some years, until those costs had mounted sufficiently for the news to be sprung upon the public that the city was too poor to make repairs, and that the BPL would have to go partners with a private real-estate developer. Bloomberg hired Karen Backus, former vice-president of Ratner Corporation, to devise the plan. Linda Johnson, when she became president of the BPL was happy to go along with it. So was de Blasio, though, during his campaign, he had warned us against those greedy developers “just lurking behind the curtain ready to grab our valuable assets.” Not long after, he accepted two quid pro quo contributions from the developer, and he allowed the $52 million bid for our library site to be accepted. Those two contributions, with evidence to back them up, are now part of Preet Bharara’s investigation of de Blasio’s other quid pro quo contributions. The city gives money for operational costs in the BPL, but intentionally refuses any sufficient money for repairs, so that these real-estate deals can move ahead. We are the losers and the developers are the winners.

Thank you for your careful reading. I wrote quickly and hope I did not sacrifice clarity. If the case does not win on appeal, or if the library is torn down before the case comes up, we are certainly the losers. Yet we continue to fight in every way we can to prevent that. For me, for all of us who know the excellence of this library and understand the shame of its possible destruction, the loss will be heartbreaking. If you want more information, you can google Citizens Defending Libraries. You are always welcome to offer any ideas and join us in our fight. Perhaps, too, you might look at the recent articles on the opening of the replacement library for the treasured Donnell that was destroyed for no good reason in 2008. You will get a sad and shocking history there. This may very well be the fate of The Brooklyn Heights Library. We might see it diminished in every way, not only in size, as it sits beneath that 36-story luxury high-rise. So we keep fighting.

The Federal Depository was housed in the sub levels, along with other precious books and documents. I personally know a few people who needed particular books and other valuable information from there. I never asked how often requests were made, but it is always important to have such materials available. We do not remove rarely read books of literary merit, for example, just because relatively few people read them. The Business, Careers, Education Library has been moved, along with The Federal Depository, to the Grand Army Plaza. There was a huge outcry against moving that library outside the downtown business district into an area far less convenient because there is limited bus and subway access there and no elevators from subway platform to street level, as we have here, for the elderly and disabled. We will no longer have easy access to that library in the business district where it logically belongs. We will no longer have a Federal Depository in this district. The Grand Army Plaza already has a Federal Depository. It will not have space for our business library for at least another year. Nydia Velazquez wrote a strong letter to the BPL requesting that The Federal Depository remain here. The request was not granted. The main thing to remember is that there is no need to tear down this valuable Brooklyn Heights Library. The destruction is motivated by the greed of a private developer who saw enormous profits from grabbing this lucrative site. He was enabled by the questionable cooperation of our city council with a mayor who accepted two quid pro quo contributions to see that the 36-story luxury tower would be built. The shrunken library replacement that will sit beneath it was something they had to supply in order to get the luxury tower.