This Noticing New York post will do something unprecedented: I will turn over most of what you will be reading here to someone else's voice:  the startling hearing testimony of researcher Donald Christensen.  I doubt that you will be disappointed!

I'd like to think that, even if readers will be reading work authored by another, they will feel as if they they are reading one of  Noticing New York's better articles.  I hesitate to make that assertion because you might think I am trying to flatter myself: The insights, research upon which they are based, and the way everything is expressed in what you will be reading is superb.

State Assemblyman Kellner's Hearing on Sale of NYC Libraries

Above, Assembly Members Micah Kellner and Joan Millman listen to NYPL President Anthony Marx's testimony.  Photo from Jonathan Barkey

Last Thursday, June 27, 2013, Assembly Member Micah Kellner, Chair of the Committee on Libraries and Education Technology, held a public hearing at 250 Broadway in  Manhattan on the sale of New York City library buildings to private developers.  The better part of what you be reading constituting this post is the stunning testimony delivered at that hearing by Donald Christensen, a professional researcher.

The hearing was very well attended with many of those attending testifying quite eloquently although some, like Mr. Christensen, set a very high bar.  Citizens Defending Libraries and The Committee to Save the New York Public Library were among those testifying with a slew of others about the sell-off and shrinkage of libraries around the city, including the Central Library Plan, Donnell and libraries in Brooklyn. Testimony concerned the cost of these plans, the proposed destruction of the historic, irreplaceable assets, and how the plans donot benefit the public.  The sell-offs resulting in shrinkage of the library system and assets owned by the public include destruction of the famed research stacks of the 42nd Street library on Fifth Avenue behind the lions, Patience and Fortitude.  I personally testified as part of Citizens Defending Libraries of which I am a co-founder.  Testimony from Citizens Defending Libraries, including mine, is available at CDL's web pages)

Overall, between 50 to 60 people signed up to testify.  Though the room was filled to capacity (about 130 people were there) with every seat taken, not all of those who signed up to testify made it to the hearing and some who made it to the hearing to testify were not able to wait until the end of the day to deliver their testimony orally (though they were able to submit their testimony in writing): The hearing, scheduled for 10:30 AM, got underway before 11:00 AM and lasted until just after 6:00 PM.  Other than the library heads, Anthony W. Marx, president of the New York Public Library, and Linda E. Johnson, president of the Brooklyn Public Library, nobody who spoke on Thursday spoke in favor of selling the libraries.

Press Coverage

Times story on Marx and the hearing

A most detailed account of the hearing from Susan Bernofsky can be found here: Friday, June 28, 2013, Saving the New York Public Library.  Video of it is now up on the Assembly’s website where a transcript will also be supplied.

The best news for opponents of the library sales was that the Times coverage, by Robin Pogrebin and prominently featured in Friday’s main art section (see above), raises the hope that these issues are beginning to get the kind of coverage they deserve.  Recently, Times reporter Joseph Berger worked mention of Citizens Defending Libraries (and accompanying link) into an updating story about the improved prospects for survival of the Pacific Branch library (Berger has also tracked the fate of libraries in an updating story about school sales were thwarted by community opposition).  That mention was a helpful adjustment for the fact that reference to Citizens Defending Libraries had been removed from the earlier Times front page story about city libraries and schools being sold.

Ms. Progrebin’s latest article didn’t refer specifically to Citizens Defending Libraries but its theme was how NYPL president Marx has needed to retreat in the face of questions about why the NYPL was proceeding with an obviously very expensive Central Library Plan when it did not yet have a design or cost calculations.  See: Critics Prompt New Review of Library Plan, June 27, 2013.

Landmark West! emailed the Times story picking out what may be its most telling line:

Mr. Kellner questioned, “If we don’t have a design yet and we don’t know cost, why has the N.Y.P.L. applied for and been granted building permits?”

The math in Marx's statements about how he was calculating that there was public benefit to the CLP also did not seem to work out unless one ignores and does not treat enormous taxpayer expenditures ($150 million) as being an expense.  In my testimony, which followed President Marx's, I offered to comment on Mr. Marx's remarks but that didn't happen, given time constraints and the long list of those signed up to speak next.

Lack of Response By Library Officials to the Public 

I would have pointed out that Mr. Marx said that the NYPL was listening and responding to public to make adjustments to its Central Library Plan, but that when Citizens Defending Libraries met with the NYPL's Chief Operating Officer, David Offensend, (May 30, 2013), we asked Offensend to describe in exactly what ways the NYPL has incorporated public feedback in updating its plans and the list he gave in a two and half minute response was sparse, although he also emphasized that the NYPL didn't have a "final design" and was "still working at it with the architects":

 •      The NYPL will "use more of the historic stack materials in the new design" to "memorialize what they look like"
 •      "People have expressed concern about how people will travel through the building" and accommodation of the larger number of people the NYPL has spent time "designing what the architects call the circulation, meaning how people move around and through the building" with "considerably more square footage open to the public. .  so we are working hard on that"
•      Signage and wayfinding, ways to improve the visitor experience.
•      The NYPL, as of September,  "agreed to a build out a portion of the Bryant Park stack to maintain many more books on site"

When we get to Mr. Christensen's testimony, remember the points above about the flow of pedestrians and crowds through the building and signage, wayfinding and visitor experience.

During his June 27th hearing testimony Marx also mentioned the accommodation to critics of building out the stacks under Bryant Park (this was actually the first of the items when Offensend `ticked' off his list).   The problem was that at the same meeting where Offensend cited this as being a revision to the plan in response to public comment he contradicted himself with an earlier statement describing the build-out as being part of the original plan.

He said that the plan had begun by 2006, perhaps as early as 2005, and that in discussion there had been concern about the amount of space available.  He said the NYPL hired the Gensler architectural firm, which was looking at the space issue and that the firm said, "The thing to do to create the right amount of space is to remove the stacks, which is the main thing here, to create that much space."  Offensend continued immediately (emphasis supplied):

And the librarians were like, well, `we'd have to figure out where to put the books.'  And we did have that second level underneath Bryant Park, and we did calculate that, fully built out, it could accommodate about the same number of stacks that were in the stacks.  So that was part of the original plan.  The librarians were very excited about it because they said that nobody uses those books very much, anyway.

So was building out the stacks actually part of the original plan or one of the NYPL's very few ostensible responses to public feedback?   I offer the above Offensend quotes without endorsement of whether I think the information stated in them is true, only to note the information given and the contradictions.  The other problem with building out the supplemental stacks under Bryant Park now in order to accommodate more books is that use of those stacks was always, for decades, the plan to accommodate future growth and needs, not present ones.  It was supposed to accommodate at least another ten years of future need. . . .

. . .  One other thing that COO David Offensend conceded at our May 30th meeting with him was that if the NYPL's calculations about space needs were incorrect, or if with growth in the future the consolidated Central Libray Plan library needed to be expanded, there was no capacity to accommodate such expansion.

Had I continued my testimony at the hearing, I would have pointed out that the NYPL's lack of response to public reaction, together with Tony Marx's math that seems to assume that taxpayer dollars spent on the CLP don't have to be calculated as a cost in any cost benefit analysis, indicate a disdain for the public.  Rather similarly, in Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Public Library does not wish to accept Citizens Defending Libraries as a representative of the public while the "Friends" of the library group has been given a lead role on the Brooklyn Heights Library "Community Advisory Committee" to represent the community even when that "Friends" group apparently believes it is never allowed to disagree or take issue with the BPL. 

Elected Representatives Present at the Hearing

Testimony from all the following elected officials was all highly critical of the library real estate deals: City Council members Tish James and Steve Levin, State Senator Velmanette Montgomery, State Senator Bill Perkins (by his representative, Michael Henry Adams).  Those Assembly Members asking the library heads for information, including Kellner and Millman, were also highly skeptical of the planned sales.

Reportedly Dejected Ms. Johnson After Hearing

BPL's Linda Johnson seemed to attempt a friendly conversation with Councilman Levin out by the elevators right before he went in to testify critically about the BPL’s sales.  Word is that the BPL's Linda Johnson was morose and cranky as she rode down in the elevator leaving the hearing, complaining about all the opposition to her planned library sales.  She was headed for a meeting of the BPL trustees later that evening.  There at that 5:30 PM meeting she was greeted by community activists who held up signs about saving the Pacific Branch.  They stayed for most of the trustees meeting, but, according to the reports I received, unless Ms. Johnson saved her remarks for the very end, she never acknowledged the activists present, nor told the trustees anything about that day’s hearing.

Through To the Bitter End

While the Times picked out the testimony of Edmund Morris, the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning writer and biographer of Theodore Roosevelt, who testified early in the day, as being of exceptional interest, as indeed it was, there was superb testimony throughout the day and you had to wait until the very end to hear some of the best of it, including Mr. Christensen’s.

Mr. Christensen was on one of the very last panels with former librarian Rita Bott who also provided some especially insightful testimony that I should perhaps publish in another follow-up.  A coincidence: It turned out that, as a librarian, Ms. Bott had assisted Mr. Christiansen with research years ago but they had never formally met.

Because the testimony from Mr. Christensen that follows below is as long as it is I have not observed the usual Noticing New York convention of indenting to indicate that the text appearing is supplied by someone else.  Also, to assist the reader with some "wayfinding" guideposts I have myself provided some subheading interjected between soem of the paragraphs.
 
Here then, without further ado, is the testimony (video available at CDL's YouTube Channel) Mr. Christensen presented. 

TESTIMONY FOR COMMITTEE ON LIBRARIES AND EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY HEARING JUNE 27, 2013 PRESENTED BY DONALD CHRISTENSEN

Thank you for this opportunity to provide information I have concerning the topic of this public hearing.   This hearing serves as a unique platform to create a public record of the facts, concerns and probable impact of the library's radical plans for reducing ready access to the library's resources for members of the public that the charter of the library promises to serve.   Perhaps this public record will be reviewed by the people who are orchestrating this radical - and destructive - plan because until today there has been virtually no input allowed from anyone outside the small cadre of people intent on a singular agenda that has little to do with the goals that until recently guided this once-great institution.

Going Back In Time: The NYPL Standards For Serving The Public That Used To Apply

To prepare for today's testimony I read through the papers of the former Director of the library during the years of the formation of the Mid-Manhattan Library as it exists today at 40th Street and Fifth Avenue.  His name was John Mackenzie Cory.   He was on the staff of the library from the early 1950s until the late 1970s.   All of his papers covering the transformation of the Mid-Manhattan building from the department store known as Arnold Constable are preserved in a large file box in the manuscript department of the Main Library building.  That collection of papers includes all the correspondence, personal memos of everything from telephone conversations to notes gathered at lunch meetings, copies of internal reports from various Trustee committees, copies of legal interpretations concerning the Mid-Manhattan property as a real estate investment as well as various "white papers" and "confidential reports" that define the sequence of events and thoughts that show the path for the development of that facility.  The records of Directors of the Library are sealed from public view for 20 years.   That means we won't be able to access such records of the current director and those of the recent past to find out exactly what they have been up to for another 20 years, in which case it might be too late.   But we have Mr. Cory's papers and they reveal a lot.   I also had the opportunity to review the minutes of the Branch Library Council, which oversees a part of the actions of the branch libraries, including Mid-Manhattan, from the years 1949 through 2002.   Those minutes and the other papers in the Branch Library Council file box at the manuscript department also reveal some interesting things.
 
While I went through these papers I took copious notes and had copies made of salient documents.    Unfortunately, I cannot share with you copies of those documents.   I have them with me, but I cannot copy them or quote from them for any type of publication (including the 20 copies of this testimony) without permission of the library.   I have not been able to secure permissions.  So I will have to paraphrase what I found in those papers.

There are two basic issues I'd like to cover today in the short amount of time I have.   First, the goals and intentions of the Mid-Manhattan library as defined by the people of John Mckenzie Cory's era in comparison to what the current regime wants to deliver to the people of New York.   Second, to look at the Mid-Manhattan property as piece of real estate.   As everyone in this room knows, this whole current plan is really a real estate story, apparently designed to make someone really, really rich while impoverishing the cultural and intellectual texture of the city of New York.

Why Mid-Mahattan Was Developed And Serves The Public The Way That It Does

First, why Mid-Manhattan was developed.    Since the late 1940s the Library wanted to move the small circulating facility out of the main building so that the main building could concentrate on the research aspect of the library that was the basis of its formation as opposed to the goals of the branch libraries.    They first considered other ways of expanding the space within the main library.   For example, there was a plan drawn up to tunnel under the terraces surrounding the building.   That plan was scratched because they wanted a general circulating/general research library that was both visible and easily accessible.   They did not want to hide it within the marble fortress of the Main Library.   Also, they wanted a facility at a location nearby the main building.   The idea was that if someone's research need was beyond the resources of a general research library, a patron could readily be sent to the main library and have their research needs handled immediately.
 
In 1961, the building housing the Arnold Constable department store came on the market.   The department store did not own the building and never had.   The store was just a tenant and in 1961 they had a lease that would not expire until 1979.   Still, the library bought the building with the specific intention of taking over the building in 1979.   The department store went out of business in 1975 and vacated the building.   In 1967 the department store vacated the top three floors of the building and the first manifestation of the Mid Manhattan library branch opened on those top three floors in 1971.   After the department store completely vacated the building, a series of recommendations were made about how to use the space.   There was a lot of pressure to rent out the first floor for commercial use to get money to run the library.   But a stronger faction within the library argued that such a thing would go against the goal of making the library fully visible from the street and readily accessible right off the sidewalk.   To make it even more inviting they increased the size of the window on the façade of the building so that people could see in and see that it was a welcoming place to enter.

Another option that was rejected was the possibility of purchasing the Columbia University Club building on West 43rd Street, which was on the market for a time prior to the full expansion into Constable building.   That option was rejected because the 43rd Street location was not visible enough.

After the commitment to the Mid-Manhattan along with its street level openness and easy accessibility, millions of visitors found that the concept has been very successful.

Accessibility and Burying Replacement Library Space Where The Research Stacks Now Exist 

But now we are faced with a different idea.   This idea strives to hide the general library deep in the bowels of a formidable building behind three massive walls of marble and far, far away from ready access from the street.   This idea more closely matches the idea of burrowing under the terraces that an earlier - and wiser - generation of library leaders rejected as inappropriate for serving the general public.   And how will this hidden facility welcome people into it or even let people know it is there?   I doubt very much that they will put a sign over Stephen Schwarzman's name on the building to tell  people what they might find inside.

As far as accessibility goes, this plan is a nightmare.   I counted how many stairs and how many strides it would take to get to that location.   Now,  I might point out, it takes about 10 strides at the Mid-Manhattan library to get from the street into the actual library space - and it's on one level.    In contrast, you have to climb 29 stairs and you have to take 62 strides to get from the sidewalk to the first door of the building's entrance.   Then you have to take another 88 strides to get from the first door, traveling through two more doors to finally get to the top of Sir Norman Foster's flamboyant and vulgar staircase to look up at a seven-story high empty atrium and then climb down more stairs to reach the main level of the so-called library.   It would take half a day to get to and from that space and only if you are in good shape.

(Added by NNY 7/4/'13) NYPL Architectural rendering of second and last of two similarly sized small doors that would lead to what was formerly the research stack space

But before you could get to Sir Norman's atrium, you would be forced to pass through one small door to get into what is now the Gottsman exhibition space and then through another small door at the other end of the Gottsman space before finally getting to Sir Norman's staircase when to  begin your descent.  Those two small doors supposedly are to serve both as the ingress and egress to and from the atrium space.   At the Mid-Manhattan building, in contrast,  there are three doors to enter and in different locations there are five doors to exit.  And even then there are sometimes lines to get in or out.  But Sir Norman's design doesn't take such traffic flow into consideration.   Maybe Sir Norman doesn't know what it takes to get a million people a year in and out of a building space if there is only one door for both paths of action.   The library has produced a video* that shows how easy it would be to get to the Sir Norman's atrium by seeming to show you floating through these little doors like Peter Pan with no other people around and no obstructions.   In reality, it would more likely look like the army of cards in Alice in Wonderland slamming up against each other to get through the White Rabbit's little door.  I can imagine that Sir Norman doesn't have to worry about crowds of ingress and egress when he visits the library building because I'm sure he is gestured in with:  "After you, Sir Norman."   When I look at the lack of doors to accommodate any reasonable type of ingress and egress flow of people, I notice that there are spaces at the rear wall of the Astor Hall that separates the Hall from the Gottesman Exhibition Hall that could be knocked out and more doors put in.   Although the Astor Hall has an interior landmark status, I understand that the landmark definition does not extend to that back wall.   I wonder if the current leaders of the library and Sir Norman would have any problem with knocking out portions of that wall - and vandalizing that space -- once they realize that people couldn't all get in and out of the single small door that is there now?

[*   (Added by NNY 7/4/'13)  There is a five minute NYPL produced video "A First Look at NYPL's Central Library Plan" that contains the Peter Pan fly through accelerated to finish in 30 seconds (just the 30 second fly through is available here: "NYPL's accelerated Peter Pan fly through a single door.")  Viewers are cautioned that the film is very deceptive in it depiction of space and some other respects, something that Noticing New York will have to deal with in a subsequent post.  The NYPL's also has a one-minute version of the fly through on its site titled "Explore NYPL's 42nd Street Renovation."]

Certainly, the distance from the sidewalk to Sir Norman's atrium would be an insurmountable expedition for a lot of people who currently use the Mid-Manhattan location with ease.   And that doesn't even begin to address the needs of disabled people.   Will people in wheelchairs be sent on an excursion to 42nd Street and up and down ramps and elevators instead of simply traveling directly off the street like they do now at Mid-Manhattan.  Maybe the library could have Sir Norman design a sign to hang out front to express what they might really mean with this obstacle path for disabled people:  "No cripples wanted."

(Added by NNY 7/4/'13) On left: Reality, light traffic through first door.  On right: NYPL Architectural rendering of second door, and only entrance to the space meant to replace two large libraries -  Is that couple conveniently diminutive?- Click to enlarge.

(Added by NNY 7/4/'13) What it looks like when more people use another of the library's similarly sized doors

(Added by NNY 7/4/'13) NYPL rendering from the inside showing the one small single door entrance.

Sir Norman's Vision?

In short, what we are getting here is the closure of a completely open democratic space and in its place we're getting a hard-to-get-to and hard-to-access area that's really designed to keep people out for elitist use by people who have the time to get there and the knowledge of where it's hidden.   And let's be frank here, who could look at that huge atrium space and not see it for what it really is:   A dramatic party room to be used occasionally by a handful of rich people.   All fully equipped with a Sir Norman staircase to enter onto and sashay down so that party goers gathered below can admire the clothes of other rich people.
  
And, by the way, why couldn't the library leadership find an American architect?   After all, the trustees of the original building were able to find American architects.  But I guess it's less fun to say "I'm taking the B train  to Union Square to meet with the architects" than to say "I have to go to London to meet with Sir Norman."

Lost, Inaccessible Library Materials (Including Materials On The NYPL Itself)

This whole Sir Norman dynamic sums up the elitist tone of this entire Central Plan.  This new space isn't for the little people.  It just another club room for today's moneyed oligarchs, their avatars and sycophants.
And to claim that the traditional use of the Main Library as a superb research center has been maintained even though most of the books have been moved elsewhere - like New Jersey - is a total lie.  While I have used that research library for over 30 years, my recent experience shows exactly how wrong-headed and dangerous this method is proving to be.   When you go to the main library, you don't know what materials are on-site or off-site.   The on-line catalog accessible via the internet at home is of little help.  You can try to order off-site materials via the internet, but the library cannot promise when the materials will be ready to be examined.   In fact, if you ask for them to arrive on a certain date, you cannot ask whether or not they will be there until AFTER the date is passed!  (See ATTACHMENT A.)    In addition, because there is no librarian to assist you in navigating through the search process, you are often sent the wrong materials.   Moreover, a lot of materials have already been lost.   For example, I wanted to look at the New York Public Library's Annual Reports from 1958 through 1962 to see what was said about the purchase of the building that is today Mid-Manhattan.   Well, those volumes have been lost. (See ATTACHMENT B.)  I had to be sent to the Butler Library at Columbia University to look at them. (See ATTACHMENT C.)  The New York Public Library has LOST the documents of their own history.   Tragically, it's not too surprising since the current leadership of the library apparently has total contempt for the treasures in their care as they throw these materials up and down the New Jersey Turnpike in a cavalier fashion.  I can report with confidence that the librarians working at the Main Library are completely frustrated with this nonsensical system that will guarantee further deterioration of the collection as it travels back and forth from storage in another state instead of just traveling up and down on small elevators from the stacks.   And why?  Again so that a few rich people can have another dramatic party room?

ATTACHMENT A- click to enlarge

ATTACHMENT B- click to enlarge

ATTACHMENT C- click to enlarge

Delving Into Real Estate Deal Aspects of Central Library Plan

The successful and ideal profile of the existing Mid-Manhattan building as fulfilling the goals of being a visible, accessible, democratically welcoming center located right on the street compared to the hidden, inaccessible, elitist nature of the proposed plan to move within the Main Building  butts up against the reality of the real estate of the Mid-Manhattan building.    This prime property is ripe for development.   But who would get it?  Who is poised to make the big money with its ownership?  But more importantly, why should the library give it up since, obviously, they could never be able to recapture such real estate if the nature of libraries changes again at some time in the future.  Plus, considering the library's past failures in successfully getting good prices for the real estate they have already sold, why should they be trusted not to throw this one away as well?

The unique placement of the Mid-Manhattan buidling finds it at the edge of the Bloomberg initative calling for the updating of buildings within what is called the East Midtown Rezoning Target Zone.   Attached is a map of that area. (See ATTACHMENT D.)  Shown on the map are shaded buildings that were built prior to 1961 and are particularly targeted for replacement with more modern and taller buildings.   You will see on this map that the building directly adjacent to the Mid-Manhattan building to the east is one of those shaded buildings - 10 East 40th Street.  The Mid-Manhattan building occupies 2-8 East 40th Street.   The library building itself is NOT within the Target Zone, but, again, the adjoining property is.

ATTACHMENT D- click to enlarge

 The Wohls
 
10 East 40th Street is owned by a group headed by real estate mogul Larry A. Wohl. Wohl's father and Wohl's father's partner Norman Levy bought 10 East 40th in the mid 70s.    The two buildings - the library building and 10 East 40th - has a long and complex interwoven history that is too complicated to get into here. The two buildings were built by the same man - Frederick Vanderbilt - who owned them until death in 1938.   There are aspects of the two buildings that overlap.  Because of this interwoven connection, Norman Levy and Wohl's father were in constant contact with John Mackenzie Cory and other library executives over one matter or another affecting both buildings.

Then in the mid 1970s after the department store decided to vacate the building and before the commitment was made to fully develop the Mid-Manhattan branch, Levy and Wohl made a very generous offer to buy the building.   This sent the library leaders to assess the situation seriously.   They drew up an analysis of 6 options, including selling the building to Levy and Wohl.   The library as well as the whole city was in dire financial straits at the time.   But in the end the library leaders took the high road.   They recognized that the building offered the best option for the goals they wanted to achieve to serve the needs of a general library.   They turned down the purchase offer to follow the ideals of the institution - visibility and accessibility, no matter what the cost.  Even though they didn't really have the money at the time.

Obviously, today if 10 East 40th could be a target for demolition and replacement with a super skyscraper, then a new building that could occupy both 10 East 40th and the Mid-Manhattan building site would make that super skyscraper even more super.   I doubt that that observation has escaped Larry Wohl.  And he has the money to do it.  In addition, Mayor Bloomberg has apparently jumped on the "tear down the Mid-Manhattan building" bandwagon.   Attached is an "agreement" from 2008 from the Mayor's office allowing the library to vacate the Mid-Manhattan building and sell it.  This so-called "agreement" looks more like a commandment than an agreement, since no one from the library signed it. (See ATTACHMENT E.)

Has that observation of linking the two properties of Mid-Manhattan and 10 East 40 escaped the notice of the current leaders of the library?  I doubt it.  But, would they stick to the principles that their predecessors under the leadership of John Mackenzie Cory showed when they turned down an offer of ready cash from Wohl's father in order to fulfill the goals of the institution of reaching out to the users of the public library by having a space visible and easily accessible.  Sadly, I doubt that as well.

They'd rather have the hidden Sir Norman party room kept pristine by keeping people out through three barriers of marble walls and time-consuming journeys to keep it available only to people with a lot of time and cut out such groups as lunchtime users who now run quickly in and out of Mid-Manhattan.

I don't know if Larry Wohl has maintained the type of constant contact with today's library leadership that his father and Norman Levy enjoyed with John Mackenzie Cory.  We won't know for another 20 years when we will be able to examine the papers of Mr. Marx and his advisers.

Wohl's Writing On The Wall? 

But the other day I got a little clue.   Walking past the two buildings where they  join on East 40th Street -I noticed that a large advertising sign for Mr. Wohl's leasing corporation, Joseph P. Day Realty, was announcing space for lease in 10 East 40th.   The sign extends far into the side of the library building.   (See ATTACHMENTS F and G.) This sign, in other words, encroaches on the library property, apparently with impunity.   Is Mr. Wohl already assuming ownership of the library building?  Are the leaders of the library already assuming that that will be the case?

ATTACHMENT F

ATTACHMENTS G

Is it much of a leap to imagine how much richer Wohl would become with control of that corner of real estate?   And is it much of a leap to imagine how much less access the people of New York will have to library services as a result?
 
As the library continues to give away its real estate to make others rich, the losers are the people of New York.

* * * *

And that, dear friends of  Noticing New York, is the startling testimony that was presented by professional researcher Donald Christensen at Micah Kellner's June 27, 2013 Assembly committee hearing about the sale of libraries in New York City.

Video is below or, best way to see it, available at CDL's YouTube Channel.

Mid-Manhattan Library and behind it 10 East 40th Street on left and 445 Fifth Avenue on right. Would these three buildings be torn down to put up a very much larger building?

As people should know by now, an important part of the New York Public Library’s Central Library Plan (CLP) is the sale of its very heavily used Mid-Manhattan Library.  In fact, there is plenty of reason to suspect that a goal of selling off that building may be the main reason that the NYPL is pursuing the CLP.  We’ll come back to that momentarily.

If the CLP goes through and the Mid-Manhattan library is sold, how big would the building be that replaces it?

Testimony delivered by Don Christensen at Assemblyman Micah Kellner’s June 27, 2013 hearing on the sale of New York City public libraries provided information and grounds for analysis to strongly suspect that 10 East 40th Street, the building directly adjacent to the Mid-Manhattan building to the east, is likely to be torn down and its lot combined with Mid-Manhattan’s to build something very big.  As Mr. Chistensen pointed out, 10 East 40th Street is one of the “shaded buildings” on the Mid-Town Rezoning map “built prior to 1961 and . .  particularly targeted for replacement with more modern and taller buildings.”  The map Mr. Chistensen provided with his testimony appears below.  See: Tuesday, July 2, 2013, Startling Testimony at State Assembly Hearing on NYC Library Sales.

This was "ATTACHMENT D" to Mr. Christensen's testimony- click to enlarge

Noticing New York included information and grounds for analysis to strongly suspect that another building next to the Mid-Manhattan Library, 445 Fifth Avenue, immediately adjacent to the south, would also be torn down and combined with the Mid-Manhattan site.  See: Saturday, June 15, 2013, SIBL, NYPL's Science, Industry and Business Library Sold At An Unreported Loss To The Public (And an Elucidating Sideways Look At The BAM South Library Real Estate Games).

The only thing that makes it truly worth tearing down big buildings is building much bigger ones.  So one way to speculate about how big the replacement building for Mid-Manhattan would be is to imagine all three of these buildings torn down and replaced by a single building proportionately much bigger than the already very big 10 East 40th Street and 445 Fifth Avenue buildings, themselves much bigger than the Mid-Manhattan building. (See the picture at the beginning of this article and below.)

Again, Mid-Manhattan Library and behind it 10 East 40th Street on left and 445 Fifth Avenue on right- Click to enlarge?

Another way of getting a sense of how big a building might replace the Mid-Manhattan Library is to judge by the colossal amount of energy and resources that are very strangely being devoted to pushing the Central Library Plan through.  When all is said and done, the Central Library Plan provides virtually no benefit for the NYPL or to the public it is mean to serve.  More correctly, it should probably said that it is destined to end with the NYPL significantly worse off than it started off.  In the end:

    •    The NYPL will have reduced the space of two major libraries of significant stature, Mid-Manhattan and the Science, Industry and Business Library, representing an aggregate of about 300,000 square feet of library space, and squeeze the those two libraries into just 80,000 square feet in the back quarters of what has hitherto been the 42nd Street Central Reference Library, a world-class institution.

    •    In that process another 80,000 square feet of space will be sacrificed and lost, the fabled research stacks of the Central Reference Library, an integral part of the building’s Carrère and Hastings design, structure and function.

    •    As Mr. Christensen's testimony also pointed out, the entirety of the space that is intended to replace the Mid-Manhattan and the Science, Industry and Business libraries will be accessed through one small door deep within the 42nd Street building.

    •    The shrunken space housing the remnants of the two former libraries of stature will be non-expandable.  This is despite the fact that:

    •        SIBL was completed (and sized) at 160,000 square feet in1996, only a few years ago, and
    •        the previous plan for Mid-Manhattan, last in effect in 2003, called for almost doubling its size by adding another 117,000 square feet.

    •    Much of the research collection of the Central Reference Library will become highly inaccessible as it is moved to storage in Princeton, New Jersey.

    •    The circulating and reference collections of Mid-Manhattan and the Science, Industry and Business Library will also be banished and, if kept at all, will become relatively inaccessible because the only way to shrink the two large libraries into such small space is to get rid of books and librarians.  That is why the NYPL is so busy working hard to get rid of books in preparation for the envisioned move.

All of this will be done at enormous cost, effort and years of construction.

The plan has still not yet been completely designed or finally costed out, but it is expected to run at least $350 million in public money, of which at least $150 million will be taxpayer dollars, altogether a likely a net negative for the NYPL after selling its real estate.  Would anyone care to guess whether $425 million is actually the more likely neighborhood of the figure that these total expenses come in at?

The CLP was conceived in 2006, perhaps 2005, according to NYPL Chief Operating Officer David Offensend.  It won’t be completed until at least 2018.  Are these things ever completed on schedule or on budget?

The deal will probably be a “stop-watch deal” (with the NYPL selling Mid-Manhattan only after completion of the CLP construction) so the condition of the real estate market and what Mid-Manhattan can eventually be sold for, the ultimately likely loss to the NYPL, will not be known for years.

And what will be the ultimate benefit for the NYPL of all this shrinkage and reduction of resources at such enormous expense?: Running much smaller shrunken-down library space with fewer librarians and fewer books will cost less to operate. . . .

. . .  Really?  Why go through such gyrations to achieve a purpose that is essentially antithetical to providing library services?  With money that could have been used to provide library services?

There really is no reason to be jumping through all these hoops, mobilizing such terrific energy, spending all these public and taxpayer dollars for such a stupid result.  That’s what ultimately causes us to infer, of necessity, that the building that replaces Mid-Manhattan is going to be a very, very big building.  Something must be fueling all this silliness. What else could it be?

(FYI: Citizens Defending Libraries has a petition now with over 13,000 signatures, most of them online, opposing the sale and shrinkage of New York City libraries to create real estate deals.)

It does seem as if more and more often the perfunctory and somehow now acceptable public relations ploy for public officials with an objectionable or weak narrative they want to peddle to the public is to simply declare that they are doing the opposite of what they are actually doing and see if anyone notices.

Does Bloomberg’s Mid-town rezoning proposal, almost doubling the density of Manhattan around Grand Central Terminal, raise the specter of absolutely unbearable congestion?: Sell the idea as a plan intended to relieve the congestion the public already perceives as oppressive!

So it is when the New York Public Library schemes to sell off library real estate.  (We are speaking of the NYPL’s Central Library Plan, “CLP”.)  If you sell off your library real estate you are going to have less library space to serve the public.  That’s something the public isn’t going to like to hear.  Right?

Solution?: Simply tell the public that shrinking library real estate way down actually amounts to increasing it!

How completely does the NYPL indulge in this reverse logic game?

Let’s first review how much library real estate the CLP discards as it shrinks library space and then consider how the NYPL depicts it all as an increase. 

The Shrinkage of 380,000 sq ft is pared down to only 80,000 sq ft

The consolidating shrinkage of the Central Library Plan involves taking about 380,000 square feet of library space and shrinking it down to 80,000 square feet.  Two libraries, together constituting about 300,000 square feet of space, the Mid-Manhattan (about 139,000 sq ft), and SIBL, the Science Industry and Business Library (160,000 sq ft), will be sold off.  In addition, in a further loss of space, the research stacks (80,000 sq ft*) underneath the Rose Reading Room of the 42nd Street Central Reference Library, serving that room, integrated into the room's function, and providing its structural support will be demolished, decommissioning the Central Reference Library as the world-class institution it was designed to be.  All of what was in the 300,000 sq ft space of the two sold-off libraries will then be squeezed into the space where the irreplaceable research stacks will have been destroyed at enormous cost to the public.  Astoundingly, it will be accessed through one small door and that perhaps says something dispiriting about how library officials really do view this as a significantly reduced space.

As recently as 2003, when growth plans were abruptly supplanted by shrinkage plans, it was proposed that Mid-Manhattan be almost doubled by adding 117,000 additional sq ft to it.  Indeed, there is good reason to argue that Mid-Manhattan should have been increased by an even greater amount than planned in 2003 because, in 2007, when it was announced that the former Donnell Library was being closed for shrinkage the public was assured that one of the reasons it needn’t regret the space disappearing from Donnell was that many of that library’s functions and collections were being transferred to Mid-Manhattan!

(* I am stating the calculations here in a way that actually underestimates the reduction of space by treating the square footage of the research stack area as being the same before and after the changes the CLP would effect, deferring to the NYPL's calculation that afterwards there will be 80,000 square feet of space.  Arguably, the seven floors of stack space constitute more than double that, 162,000 square feet of space.  You will see, reading on, that the NYPL inaccurately asserts the stacks constitute even more space than that.  But the seven floors of the stacks are not “stories” or  “floors” in a typical and conventional sense: Each is about 7’ tall, shorter than a normal ceiling height, and the floors are thin marble catwalks supported in the steel matrix of the structure with open slots of about 4 inches between the catwalks and the shelves that allow air to circulate freely between floors.)    

Statements in which library officials (and Mayor Bloomberg) assert that they are increasing library space rather than shrinking it.

The day after Nicole Gelinas of the Manhattan Institute published an opinion column in the New York Post lambasting the Central Library Plan as a “vanity real estate” boondoggle in which she said the  Mid-Manhattan and the Science, Industry and Building Library would be  “crammed” into the 42nd Street building (see: Real-estate fiction-NY Public Library’s risky scheme, July 7, 2013), the NYPL’s Chief Operating Officer, David Offensend, responded in a letter to the Post denying that fact and describing that space reduction as, instead, being an increase with these words: “There will be more public space available than currently exists in all three buildings” (Make book on this, July 8, 2013.)

Space is space and inherently valuable, so the only way in which to describe a space reduction as an increase in space is to side-step an apples-to-apples comparison of space by substituting other contrived measures of evaluation; for example being oblivious to that fact libraries are far more than what Mr. Offensend might selectively characterize as space that is “publicly open” and oblivious to how  the NYPL is getting ride of books and librarians, themselves significant assets that are part of properly serving the public.

This contrarian idea of describing significantly “smaller” as greatly “bigger” so as to confuse the public isn’t new.  It may be a reason why the public and the press accepting statements from the NYPL at face value haven’t raised the extraordinary outcry you would expect in reaction to plans to cast off these irreplaceable assets and crown jewels of the library system.

Go inside the 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue Central Reference Library building and you will find pretty but difficult-to-interpret schematics hung up as PR canvasses advising you that all the complexity represented there reassuringly boils down simply to this (see image below): The NYPL is “Doubling Public Space.”

That’s the “big type”!  If you diligently read the small print you will find that you are even more reassuringly told (emphasis supplied) that: “The plan will more that double public space at  42nd Street by converting an area the size of seven football fields— the closed book stacks — into a lending library and other educational spaces.” . ..  Note how easily the ambiguity of the word  “closed” allows the reader to mistakenly infer that the research stacks are no longer used and no longer have function.

“Seven football fields”?  That's clearly a reference to the square footage of the seven floors of research stacks that will be torn out given the telltale “seven” reference, but it is an inaccurate and a misleading statement in several respects, the most significant being that the square footage of the space planned to replace the stacks (80,000 square feet) will be only 39% more than the size of one football field, an American football field being 57,600 square feet.  But the idea that there are “seven football fields” of stack space to be converted is balderdash in that each floor of the stacks is only about 23,000 square feet, far less than half an American Football field, with the entire seven floors of that space adding up to only only about 162,000 square feet.  That's fewer than three American football fields.  Soccer, rugby and virtually every other kind of football fields are bigger than an American football field which would throw the NYPL's calculations even more wildly off.  Does anyone want to bet that when the NYPL does its space calculations it switches over to measurements of cubic square feet whenever that boosts its exaggerations?

A sectional view of the research stacks as they appeared on the cover of "Scientific American".  “Seven football fields” of claimable space per the NYPL?  Hardly.

Around the bend you will discover other NYPL visuals that deceptively misrepresent the volumes of space being reshuffled and severely contracted as the NYPL discards is assets selling off real estate, somehow, counter-intuitively, at a probable net financial loss that is being downplayed.

Above you see the `explanatory’ canvasses at the 42nd Street Central Reference Library and below you see a version of the same NYPL-supplied visual picked up in a Library Journal article about the two lawsuits recently filed to block the demolition of research stacks that would ruin the function of the Central Reference Library.  (See: Second Suit Filed to Halt NYPL Central Renovation, by Meredith Schwartz, July 11, 2013.)  Observe that Library Journal simply reproduces the NYPL image without noting any of its oddities.

The NYPL promulgated visual above is startling in the way that it deceptively misrepresents what the NYPL is proposing to do in terms of shrinking down library space (which is one of the reasons the NYPL is getting rid of books).  The Science, Industry and Business Library (SIBL) is diagrammed as if it is the smallest of the spaces they are dealing with.  It is actually the largest of the library spaces at 160,000 sq ft.  Mid-Manhattan at about 140,000 sq ft is the second largest although it is made to look about the same size as the representation of the 80,000 sq ft of space where the research stacks are now that would be ripped out.  Even though, bottom line, 380,000 square feet of library space is being shrunk down to just that 80,000 sq ft (to be accessed through only one small door way in the back of the building), the diagram almost makes it look like it could all fit without throwing away the books they are throwing out.

Also, just looking at the diagram and not reading what it says you might think that Central Reference Library books are not being moved off-site to Princeton, New Jersey and/or elsewhere.  And you might think that the stack space under Bryant Park is not already being used, that it did not previously exist, nor that it had the intended purpose of also covering future expansion which it will, under this plan, no longer be able to do.  It would be incorrect to suppose any of the above.

This silliness is replicated in an even more forcefully misleading way, in a video animation inserted in a five-minute NYPL-produced film that plays on a loop in the 42nd Street building’s lobby and is available on its web site: “A First Look at NYPL's Central Library Plan.”  I have made just the animation segment available in the video below.

NYPL animation misrepresenting space shuffling as part of CLP Plan



If the spacial relations were more correctly depicted it would look like this.

click to enlarge

Or wouldn’t it be better to better to depict the entire before and after this way?

click to enlarge

The NYPL was not alone in making the misrepresentation to the public that what was going on was a seeming increase to the supply of publicly owned library space with the building of libraries bigger than had ever been previously seen.  Mayor Bloomberg has done the same thing.  They must be conferring on strategy.

Bloomberg has been starving New York City libraries of funds so that the fact that the libraries are underfunded and in disrepair can be cited as an excuse to sell them off.  See the chart of increased usage versus drastically reduced city funding below.  If the public comprehended that this tactic was translating into sale of libraries and shrinkage of the system they would be outraged, but instead Bloomberg spoke to them in his February State of the City Address informing the public that he was doing something sounding like it was certainly the opposite:

In midtown, we’re helping the New York Public Library build the largest circulating and research library in the world.

(WNYC text: Bloomberg's Final State of the City Address, Thursday, February 14, 2013)

Bloomberg was not telling the public that the new large midtown library was intended to consist of the shrunken remnants of Manhattan’s formerly great libraries: Mid-Manhattan, SIBL, the Donnell Library (shrunk from 97,000 square feet to 28,000 square feet) and the world-renowned Central Reference Library.  Nor was Bloomberg saying that it was already announced that the program of sale and shrinkage of libraries was being exported to Brooklyn with the intended sale of the Brooklyn Heights and Pacific Branch libraries, and others yet unspecified in line afterward, and with a consolidating cramming of space that will affect Brooklyn’s main library at Grand Army Plaza.

Arguments For Smaller Libraries?

Maybe there are possible arguments for smaller libraries but usage of New York City libraries is way up, 40% programmatically and 59% in terms of circulation.  Demand for physical books is up and a new Pew Study tells us that our modern age youth are far from ready to give up their physical books: American Youth Read Books in Print (For Now), by Aron Chilewich, June 26, 2013.

If smaller libraries really are truly better wouldn’t library officials be telling us that?  To an extent they might actually be endeavoring to do that, quibbling a bit bout the space calculations, speaking in terms of equivalent space, usable space, “found” space and the “flexibility” of replacement space built without fixed walls.  See: Friday, May 24, 2013, Previews Of The Proposed New Donnell Library: The NYPL Unveils Its Version Of The “Silk Purse” Libraries It Envisions For Our Future and Thursday, April 25, 2013, Building a “Murphy Library”.

The bleacher/stairs can be used to show people David Niven movies in the daylight- Go to NNY's earlier article to see, with picture, what Ronald Reagan film probably ought to be shown.

Sometimes it almost appears that library officials are, in fact, ready and intending to implement these ideas about these new smaller, flexible library spaces.  When I wrote my own article reviewing the plans for the depressingly reduced `replacement’ for the Donnell Library that is largely sadly bookless,  I did not slow down enough to observe things about this (above) promotional visual of the new staircase-shaped “piazza” that this anonymous reader of Librarian News did:

If you look at the picture carefully you see some odd things. Movie playing on the wall. Musicians playing in the corner and a person speaking in front of them.     

That’s not to mention that the movie is being played while daylight comes in from the street above.  (See: State of the Art Library to Open on NY's Upper West Side in 2015...But Existing Libraries Find Funding Slashed, birdie.)

Another commenting reader cites several reasons he/she doesn’t think David Niven would approve of the perhaps hazardous design.

But, in point of fact, we know that the truth of the matter is that smaller libraries aren’t better.  We know this because if library administration and city officials really thought this was true they wouldn’t be spending so much time making the opposite case, that big is better, going out of their way to tell us how they are building bigger libraries when they actually aren’t.

They really do have a problem truthfully making their case: Right now advertising history is being made by AT&T with its new “It’s Not Complicated” campaign.  That’s one where kids are interviewed by a deadpan adult about how “fast is better” than “slow” and “bigger is better” than “small.”  (See: How AT&T Got Kids to Make Some of the Year's Best Ads- BBDO spins comic gold from their crazy brains, by Tim Nudd,  April 15, 2013.)

In that spirit I conclude this post with some AT&T “It's Not Complicated” `bigger is better’ commercials, because you know what?  It’s true: It isn’t complicated.

(Note:More about the opposition to the Central Library Plan and the selling off and shrinkage of New York City libraries, including a petition that can be signed, two recent lawsuits brought against the CLP and statements against the sales and shrinkage by the New York City Comptroller and the New York City Public Advocate- both candidates for mayor- and other elected officials and candidates is available from Citizens Defending Libraries, a group of which I am a co-founder.)      

AT&T TV Commercial - It's Not Complicated "Tree House"



It's Not Complicated High Fives Commercial AT&T



AT&T TV Commercial - It's Not Complicated "Infinity"

    

Here’s some news, a bit of a round-up of stories concerning who you might vote for in tomorrow’s primary election.

When I was in government, for all the months leading up to an election we kept our heads down, referring to the election season as the “silly season” trying to ignore, particularly the hyperbole and shrill rhetoric,  what was going on.  It was axiomatic that much of what was being said wasn’t sincerely meant and that in many respects whatever politicians were elected to office they would wind up doing very similar things.  You know, `politics is the art of promising what is popular to the public and governance is what actually gets done in terms of running things after the election.’

Nevertheless, as a member of the electorate there is no better or more important time than now in terms of having candidates clarify their positions and locking them firmly into promises tat will cause embarrassing damage to their careers if they don’t honor.

With that as background. . .

Candidate Recommendations From Citizens Defending Libraries

Citizens Defending Libraries (of which I am a co-founder), formed in February of this year in response (with a petition) to the breaking headlines about the selling off, shrinking and underfunding of New York City libraries to create real estate deals that benefit real estate developers, not the public, has issued recommendations on candidates running for office in new York City.
 
Citizens Defending Libraries first issued its recommendation NOT to vote for Christine Quinn.  (See: Citizens Defending Libraries First Election Recommendation: NO to Christine Quinn, Who Favors Selling & Shrinking Libraries.)

Citizens Defending Libraries then issued its recommendations, pro and con, respecting other candidates in the election.  (See: Citizens Defending Libraries Recommendations On Other Candidates: Vote For Liu or de Blasio (Depending), Tish James For Public Advocate, NO to Squadron, and . . . More .)

Citizens Defending Libraries recommends voting for John Liu or Bill de Blasio (depending- detailed explanation at its site) for the Democratic nomination for Mayor and recommends voting for Tish James for Public Advocate.  Citizens Defending Libraries strongly recommends against voting for Daniel Squadron for that position.  In addition, Citizens Defending Libraries has other recommendations on other candidates.  That includes City Council and Borough President races in addition to a recommendation to vote for George McDonald for the Republican nomination for Mayor.

Candidates that Citizens Defending Libraries recommends include the following candidates for City Council seats: Steve Levin, Yetta Kurland, Micah Kellner and Ede Fox.

As for who I will be voting for, for Mayor (and who I think most Noticing New York readers will be voting for). . . .  I will get to that in a minute.

Citizens Defending Libraries recommendations are based on the Mayoral forum on libraries it held for Mayoral candidates on August 30th (link provided below), the Public Advocates and Comptroller Candidates forum on libraries held September 4, (link provided below), responses to its candidates questionnaire and its other interactions with, and information about, the candidates.  The full whys, wherefores and analysis are provided at Citizens Defending Libraries web pages links provided above.

    •    Mayoral Forum on Libraries Held August 30, 2013
   
    •    Public Advocates and Comptroller Candidates Forum on Libraries Held September 4, 2013 
   
If you check in with what was said at these forums you'll notice that the politics of the real estate industry and its influence in this city was talked about a lot.

Other Candidate News: WNYC Reports on de Blasio’s Atlantic Yards History

A few days ago WNYC ran one of its best stories to date on the Atlantic Yards mega-project:  De Blasio’s Atlantic Yards Support Helped Old Ally ACORN played pivotal role in 2001 City Council race, Thursday, September 05, 2013, by Matthew Schuerman.

Click to listen to the audio below.



Norman Oder of Atlantic Yards Report is quoted (using a sound bite) in the WNYC story.  Here is his largely complimentary Atlantic Yards Report take on WNYC’s reporting: Thursday, September 05, 2013, WNYC on de Blasio: "his handling of Atlantic Yards raises questions about whether he has been able to push developers to keep their promises".
       
Mr. Oder says:

I'd encourage people to listen to the audio, rather than rely on the text version, since there are some key differences and shadings.

Notably, in the audio version, the last word goes to the skeptical Letitia James, rather than the self-serving Bill de Blasio. And she deserves it.

By the way, not by coincidence, Tish James, running and recommended for the Public Advocate office by Citizens Defending Libraries, has been in the forefront of the opposition to the selling off, shrinking and underfunding of libraries for real estate deals.  See the follwoing Tish James OpEd that appeared in both the Brooklyn Eagle and the Huffington Post: OPINION: Shrinking the library system is a loss for New Yorkers, August 29, 2013.

The best financed opponent of Tish James, Daniel Squadron, recommended for office by Noticing New York for his senatorial office in 2008 because of expressed opposition to Atlantic Yards (though never ultimately acted on), has refused to oppose New York City’s library sales, including not representing his constituents to oppose the proposed sale of the Brooklyn Heights Library.  Squadron is also regarded as having sold out the supporters who got him into office when he relinquished, without a fight, substantial leverage he had to oppose a huge amount of development that might have been parts of Brooklyn Bridge Park.

For more on Squadron and libraries Citizens Defending Libraries has a tasty YouTube Video up with moderator Roy Paul asking some hard questions: Squadron Surrogate Mark Green Grilled On Offensend Donation.

Back to WNYC’s story about de Blasio on Atlantic Yards. .

Here is my Noticing New York comment posted at WNYC’s site:

This story is one of the best that WNYC has done on Atlantic Yards giving to it the kind of time the subject deserves.

Nevertheless, here is what is absent from the narrative reported. The story is all about failure to enforce the "public benefit" aspects of Atlantic Yards (de Blasio's failures in particular), not about the fact that those public benefit terms were, in the first instance, written by the developer for the developer's benefit, not the public.

Atlantic Yards as originally conceived was not right and de Blasio should have opposed it (He once feinted at doing so) from the beginning demanding a different project divided up and competitively bid amongst multiple developers, one that did not involve tearing down much of the neighborhood with eminent domain. The project should only be building over the rail yards, not on the rubble of what Ratner was allowed to tear down.

Instead, one of the main features of Atlantic Yards that is bad is also now central to the problems of negotiating with the developer and enforcing public benefit: That Forest City Ratner has been granted a government-supported mega-monopoly. You can't negotiate with a monopoly. You can't negotiate with a mega-monopoly. Mr. de Blasio and others should insist that the Atlantic Yards mega-monopoly be taken away from Forest City Ratner, Mr. de Blasio's campaign donor.

Here is more Noticing New York analysis on that subject: Tuesday, April 30, 2013, Relevance of Mayoral Debate Discussion About Forest City Ratner Atlantic Yards Misconduct To The Sale and Underfunding of NYC Libraries.

Relevant Background Report: The Vicious Cycle Of Subsidies And Elections

In early August Atlantic Yards Report ran a story extremely relevant to elections, echoing a concern repeatedly raised here in Noticing New York: How government subsidies pick and flow money to economic winners, including the very politically connected Forest City Ratner, and then companies like the Ratner firm, awash in such benefit, flow that money back to get their favorite politicians elected.  (That’s why de Blasio taking money and campaign support from Ratner is such a concern.)  The story was about a new Cause of Action report specifically about Forest City Ratner.  According to the New York Post:

Forest City Enterprises, the real-estate behemoth whose subsidiary built the Barclays Center, has taken pay-to-play to new levels, an explosive new report charges.  The company has gotten indirect government subsidies totaling $2.6 billion over the last decade — or 23 percent of its $11.4 billion in revenues over the period, according to the report.

See: Wednesday, August 07, 2013, A national spotlight: libertarian watchdog group targets Forest City Enterprises for "political profiteering"; while report goes over the top, Forest City's defense is too pat.

More from the Post:

“For far too long, Forest City Enterprises has operated on the model of political profiteering, essentially rigging the marketplace by paying off government officials with lavish campaign contributions and gambling with taxpayer funds for its private profit,” Cause of Action's Epstein told the Post.

Responds Forest City Ratner (Oder says “a wee bit” defensive and self-righteously):

Forest City spokesman Jeff Linton said, “It should come as no surprise that we support candidates whose policies promote economic development and job creation. However, to suggest or imply a direct connection between this support and our opportunities as a company is baseless and defamatory.”

He said without government development incentives, most of the company’s development projects “would not be economically viable.”

To me that sounds nearly like, `yes, you’re right.’

Apparently the report doesn’t get all its subsidy calculations correct (I think it may underestimate them), a hard thing to do, which is one reason firms like the Ratner firm walk away pocketing so much more taxpayer money than the electorate is likely to actually know.

I’ll leave the quibbles about the report and its calculations to Mr. Oder, who says: 

It's also simplistic to suggest that Forest City's considerable spending on campaign contributions and lobbying directly delivers subsidies and government assistance.

Instead, I will pose the following as a standing question which I think that any reporter interviewing Forest City Ratner and its executives should always be primed and ready to ask:

What was the last project, if any, that Forest City Ratner did that did not receive significant public subsidy from some level of government and was subject to a true competitive bid?   

The question has never been asked.  The answer is that there aren’t any.

The New York Times Weighs In On What Developers Think Of The Silly Season

With all that money flowing in, developers likely believe that, in the end, they have the upper hand, according to a New York Times article that describes what developers think of the silly season:

In the Democratic primary for New York City mayor, a new set of political dirty words has surpassed the usual favorites, like “lobbyist” and “flip-flop,” that are traditionally used to spritz opponents and adversaries with a film of slime.

These new dirty words are “real estate,” “developers” and “condos” — printable, and yet filthy with disdain. But, conveniently, they have not stopped any of the major campaigns from accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from the real estate industry. 

    * * * *

Some members of the real estate industry may grumble to find themselves on the raw end of a stump speech, said Kathryn S. Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, a business group, but most just shrug it off.

 “It’s political pandering to a public sentiment that the middle class and low-income people have been left out of the prosperity of the past decade,” Ms. Wylde said. “I think, for the most part, they would govern with very different interests than their political rhetoric suggests.”

And so the money rolls in.

(See: The Appraisal: In Mayoral Race, Attacking Real Estate Industry but Taking Its Cash, by Elisabeth A. Harris and Jo Craven McGinty, September 2, 2013.)

That “shrug” above comes from the same Kathryn S. Wylde with whom I used to do a considerable amount of work and who favors the use of eminent domain to take property away from individuals and hand it over to politically-connected developers.  (I don’t yet know her position on handing over public libraries, but I fear to guess.)

Kathy Wylde

 And The Winner Is. . . . ?

Who will I personally vote for, for Mayor?: I will vote for John Liu!

That's because in this season of rhetoric I think it is most important to go back and look at the record of what a candidate has actually done and John Liu has a record of standing up to the real estate industry.  He also one of the candidates not funded by that industry.  I suspect that most regular Noticing New York readers, remembering the record of the candidates, will be voting for Liu.

Voting for Liu may get us into a run-off in which Liu will participate.  Whether or not it does, I think that voting for Liu sends the best message, one that desperately needs to be sent.

Aren’t libraries supposed to be places that contain books for us?

The following American Heritage Dictionary definitions of “library” would seem to make that clear:

    a. A place in which reading materials, such as books, periodicals, and newspapers, and often other materials such as musical and video recordings, are kept for use or lending.
    b. A collection of such materials, especially when systematically arranged.
    c. A room in a private home for such a collection.
    d. An institution or foundation maintaining such a collection.

Here are Merriam Webster Dictionary’s principal definitions for “library.”

    a : a place in which literary, musical, artistic, or reference materials (as books, manuscripts, recordings, or films) are kept for use but not for sale
    b : a collection of such materials

Dictionary.com supplies about the same:

    1. a place set apart to contain books, periodicals, and other material for reading, viewing, listening, study, or reference, as a room, set of rooms, or building where books may be read or borrowed.
    2. a public body organizing and maintaining such an establishment.
    3. a collection of manuscripts, publications, and other materials for reading, viewing, listening, study, or reference.
    4. a collection of any materials for study and enjoyment, as films, musical recordings, or maps.
    5. a commercial establishment lending books for a fixed charge; a lending library.

So it would seem that, by definition, a library ought to be a place where books are kept.  Oh, sure, there is more to it than that: There is the idea the place where the books are kept should be a place where people can have ready access to them, the ease of access being a central purpose of having gathered the books together in one place . .  Per that proverbial tree-falling-in-a-forest question: Would a collection of books kept on the moon where nobody could ever visit them still be a library?   It’s doubtful, even if the books constituted the greatest collection of books ever assembled.

Books being being brought together in a “collection,”“systematically arranged,” goes to the notion that an inherently valued goal is to have depth to the collection, the idea that presenting a multiplicity of choices for the reading patron is desirable, probably the more books to select from the better.

What about librarians?  Are they an essential part of a library?  We’ll get to that before we conclude.

Haven’t our visions of libraries always considered that we would find them filled with books, a wonderful wealth of books waiting to be discovered on their shelves?

Here are some stills of libraries from famous movie scenes that feature libraries.

Marian, the librarian with "The Music Man."  Marian's library had books!  Plenty of them.

Two floors of shelves full of books!

In Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" just how many books are in the Beast's library impresses the beautiful Belle

Very impressive, indeed!

In "Breakfast at Tiffany's" Audrey Hepburn's Holly Golightly reads more than one book at a time, not so uncommon when you are doing research

In the magical world of Harry Potter, the gifts and ease that magic can confer doesn't replace the importance of a library with well-stocked shelves full of secrets to be discovered by determined adventurers

In Harry Potter, a ghostly exploration of the libraries for that one book containing an essential fact needed to make sense of the world the young protagonists must conquer.

More that is ghostly: In "Ghostbusters." The ghost in the stacks of 42nd Street's Central Reference Library, like Audrey Hepburn, also seems t like to read more than one book at at time.

To jump ahead, we will be getting to the way that librarians are disappearing from the libraries under the tenure of the current library administration officials who prefer to pay real estate people instead.

The fictional "Ghostbusters"

The imagined stacks of the 42nd Street Central Reference Library in the big budget, special effects "Ghostbusters" film are a good deal less fantastic than the real thing.  By comparison, though full of books, they are quite pedestrian.

The real stacks beneath the Central Reference Library's Rose Reading room are a seven-story book-delivery machine designed to the height of perfection.   

A sectional view of the research stacks as they appeared on the cover of "Scientific American".

In 1966 Francis Ford Coppola directed "You're a Big Boy Now", his first film for a major studio, much of which was shot at the 42nd Street Central Reference library.  In it Bernard Chanticleer, the young protagonist of the coming of age film, played by Peter Kastner, works as a book-delivering stackboy outfitted with roller skates to speed the books to library patrons with the greatest possible efficiency.  
The roller skates might seem like one of this Coppola film's several surreal touches that, like "Ghostbusters" set this film at a remove or two from reality.  Coppola was enough in love with the idea of roller skating stackboys to put it in the film even though it wasn't in the book the film derives from, but it is a myth that the pages in the stacks scoot around on roller skates.  It is not, however, an unreasonably baseless myth.  According to the New York Times, in March of 1938, NYU put the pages in its basement stockroom on roller skates to reduce the time for delivery of volumes to just "55 seconds."  See: Pages on Roller Skates, ("A novel way to cope with unusual book delivery problems has been started at the New York University Washington Square College Library at the university's downtown center.") March 13, 1938.


Actually, Coppola had previously been mainly a script writer and because he was given permission to direct on condition that the film's budget be kept extremely low, the film is rich in its delivery of sights of authentic New York circa 1966 and an authentic 42nd Street library.  Indeed, the opening sequence over which the film's credits appear, depicts the genuine and superb efficiency of the research library's pneumatic tubes delivering book slip requests and the book elevator sending books up from the stacks.
In the film, the research stacks are full of books.

What about real life?  What about real life today?  More ghostly than the scenes in "Ghostbusters" the NYPL, the library administration officials in charge of the New York Public Library, have removed all the books from the 42nd Street Central Reference Library's fabled stacks.  See pictures below.

Why have all the books been taken out of the 42nd Street library research stacks?  Because having books in a library takes up real estate and the NYPL wants to sell off a hefty portion of its most valuable real estate in central Manhattan.  Not by coincidence the same real estate comprises the sites of the best, most important and publicly valuable libraries in the city.  The NYPL already rushed to sell off one centrally located, crown-jewel library, the five-story, 97,000 square foot Donnell Library across from MoMA on 53rd Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues).  Its sale (netting a paltry $39 million for the NYPL) was suddenly announced in 2007 after a secretive process.- Even as low as it is, that $39 million figure is not net of what the NYPL paid high-priced consultants. . .  the NYPL has paid consultants millions of dollars in connection with these sales.   (See:  Monday, May 27, 2013, More Thoughts On Valuation And What The NYPL Should Have Received As Recompense For The Public When It Sold The Donnell Library.)

Now, as part of what it calls the Central Library Plan, the NYPL plans to destroy the Central Reference Library's research stacks and sell off the heavily used Mid-Manhattan Library together with SIBL, the Science, Industry and Business Library recently built at substantial public expense in the old Atlman's Department store at 34th Street.  (See: Sunday, July 7, 2013, When (If?) The Mid-Manhattan Library Is Ultimately Sold As Part Of NYPL’s Central Library Plan, How Big A Building Would Replace It? and Saturday, June 15, 2013, SIBL, NYPL's Science, Industry and Business Library Sold At An Unreported Loss To The Public (And an Elucidating Sideways Look At The BAM South Library Real Estate Games).

The end result of the Central Library Plan would be that well over 380,000 square feet of library space (Mid-Manhattan, SIBL and the research stacks to be destroyed) would be shrunk down to a mere 80,000 square feet.  (See: Saturday, July 13, 2013, Deceptive Representations By New York Public Library On Its Central Library Plan: We’re NOT Shrinking Library Space, We Are Making MORE Library Space!)

click to enlarge

If you choose to treat as countable in the calculations all of the floor space occupied by the bookshelves and being walked upon by the actors in "You're a Big Boy Now" (despite unusually low ceilings) it actually amounts to 460,000 square feet of library space being reduced to just 80,000 square feet.  This shrinkage is actually an about-face in terms of planning.  Previous to the current cast of real estate estate fixated executives now at the NYPL, library administration officials had planned to nearly double the size of the Mid-Manhattan Library.

All that is left of these then squeezed down and shrunken libraries will be accessed through just one small door near the back of the current 42nd Street library building.  (See: Tuesday, July 2, 2013, Startling Testimony at State Assembly Hearing on NYC Library Sales.)

Why is the NYPL getting rid of the books?  Because books take up space.  There is no way that you can squeeze down all that space to something as tiny as proposed without getting rid of the books.  Keeping books requires real estate and they only want to sell their real estate.

When Citizens Defending Libraries met with the NYPL's Chief Operating Officer David Offensend, Mr. Offensend confirmed that once the Central Library Plan is effectuated, shrinking down the space, there will be no option to expand the library space again to correct for any possible miscalculations and no way to accommodate future growth.  If growth of any kind needs to be accommodated in the future the only way to do that will be to get rid of even more books.  But Mr. Offensend also confirmed something else: That there were as yet no firm plans, no calculations about what quantity of books would be kept and accommodated in the new shrunken down space.  Yet the real estate plans to shrink the space were already firmly in place.

One may infer from this that the objective of selling the real estate came first and took precedence over decisions relating to keeping any books.  I am a co-founder of Citizens Defending Libraries and was part of the meeting where Mr. Offensend informed us of these things.

It's inevitably going to be bad, but there might not be the total train wreck you might expect when all the books and library space is collapsed.  Why?  Because in preparation for this shrinkage it seems that books are disappearing from library shelves ahead of time.  They are disappearing now.  I suppose this prevents the scenerio where some wise-ass shows up and asks the obvious question: `How ya gonna fit all them books in such a tiny space?'   This way, library officials will, instead, be able to respond: `What books?  Where?'

Librarians have been telling Citizens Defending Libraries that books are being removed from the NYPL's bookshelves according to edicts issued by Anne Coriston, NYPL's vice president for public service, one of the NYPL's library senior executives in the library group in charge of "Strategy" and the Central Library Plan consisting of COO David Offensend, Andrew W. Mellon Director Ann Thornton, Anne Coriston, Vice President for Capital Planning and Construction Joanna Pestka, Vice President for Finance and Strategy Jeffrey Roth, and Director of Strategy Micah May.

On the NYPL trustee level, it is reportedly Stephen A. Schwarzman and Marshall Rose who are pushing the NYPL's real estate plans (both are in the real estate business), although apparently Mr. Offensend is now officially working on the Central Library Plan on a "task force" with two other trustees, David Remnick and Katharine J. Rayner.   Mr. Remnick, a journalist, has since 1998, been editor of The New Yorker, a magazine that, under other circumstance, might have been expected to investigate and report vigerously and critically about the NYPL’s Central Library Plan.

I thought I would go out to the libraries and see for myself if books were disappearing from the shelves.  Unfortunately, as I can't time travel back, I have no "before" pictures to go along with these many "after" pictures.

First, let's go to Barnes & Noble, just to remind ourselves what full bookshelves look like.  I paid special attention to the biography sections.

Closeup of books in the Barnes and Noble Biography section, in the center two copies of David Nasaw's "The Chief" about  publisher William Randolph Hearst.

Above, shown amongst a closeup of some of the biographies at Barnes and Noble, are two copies of the 2000 book, “The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst” by David Nasaw.  “The Chief” won the Anthony Lukas Book Prize and the Bancroft Prize for American history. It was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award.  It is one of two books by Mr. Nasaw, the other being a biography of Joseph P. Kennedy, “The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy,” that contain information about my grandfather Thomas Justin White, who was president and general manager of the Hearst organization.

When I visited the Mid-Manhattan Library this 2002 award-winning book was not on its shelves and I was told that the library no longer had a copy in its collection.  I was told that if I wanted to read it I would have to go over to the Central Reference Library, currently a non-circulating library.

Mr. Nasaw, together with Citizens Defending Libraries, is one of a number of plaintiffs participating in a lawsuit against the NYPL seeking to halt the Central Library Plan’s destruction of the research stacks.  In total, nine recognized and award-winning scholars are joined with Citizens Defending Libraries in that lawsuit.  Mr. Nasaw is also the author of a 2006 biography of library philanthropist and steel magnate Andrew Carnegie that was a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for biography.  The Central Reference Library's research stacks are constructed of Carnegie steel.

Mr. Nasaw wrote his most recent biography about Joseph P. Kennedy after being invited to do so by the Kennedy family, based in the strength of his previous biographies.  Similarly, biographer Edmund Morris, another plaintiff with Citizens Defending Libraries in the lawsuit, wrote his 1999 biography of Ronald Reagan, “Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan,” when the Reagan family approached him based on his earlier Theodore Roosevelt biography work.  Mr. Morris won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for his first book, “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt.”

In an affidavit Mr. Morris provided in the lawsuit Mr. Morris described his current inability to get the research books he needs to do his writing at the Central Reference Library: 

7. Those individuals who support the Plan are prone to boast that books relegated to offsite storage are made available within two days of request. My experience is that requests for materials stored "off site" often takes much longer than the vaunted delivery time of 48 hours. And this does not include those situations in which the book requested cannot be found, ostensibly due to its having been transported back and forth.

8. Frustrating though this is for a researcher living in the New York area — particularly when one returns to the Library on the predicted delivery date, and finds the item still not available — it is worse for scholars from out of town or overseas, who have to pay hotel and other bills while waiting and waiting and waiting. . . .

The Orwellian effect of these disappearing books is thus twofold: The materials needed to to write books such as historical biographies cannot be found in the library, and then, once those biographies written, those looking to read them cannot readily find them.  (We won’t, at this moment, get into the even worse Orwellian characteristics of digital books: Amazon Erases Orwell Books From Kindle, by Brad Stone, July 17, 2009.)

In any event Barnes and Noble is still using its real estate to present us with physical books.



By contrast, the NYPL is not currently filling its precious library real estate with books.  The pictures of largely empty shelves below are from SIBL.  The emptiness does seem to substantiate the claim librarians are making that the NYPL wants its shelves no more than half full.










One reason it may be considered extra startling that the shelves at SIBL are so empty is that this library has already gone through a significant contraction, giving up a lot of space to the Episcopal Church’s Church Pension Group, sold at very low price given what the public paid to build SIBL not so long ago.  Coincidentally (or not?) the Church Pension Group moving into the SIBL space is freeing up real estate right next to the Mid-Manhattan library that the NYPL wants to sell off.

Entrance on 34th Street to the old Altman's Building to former SIBL space taken over by the Church Pension Fund

A lot of the valuable real estate of the Mid-Manhattan Library's shelves is also going unused, some of it startlingly so.

Mid-Manhattan has William Randolph Hearst biographies, but not "The Chief"

With the "extinction" of books at Mid-Manhattan, will readers find enough to teach themselves about global warming and mass extinctions of the past?  This library is supposed to provide science research resources at the high school, college and general research level.

At Mid-Manhattan, it's not just the books that are scarce.  Shelves that could be holding DVD's and CDs (including great audio lectures) also look barren. I asked a librarian about finding DVDs of "The Avengers," the British television series from the 1960's with Patrick Mcnee's John Steed and Diana Rigg's Ema Peel.  These DVD's are expensive to go out and buy.  The program aired for most of the decade, but the library did not have enough copies to have any episode with Ema Peel available on the shelf that day.  All that was available was a DVD from an early series year with Honor Blackman playing Cathy Gale, predecessor of Ms. Peel.   That's not a scientific test by any means, but what are all those empty shelves about?





The strategies of selling off libraries and library space that were launched by Offensend and his cohorts with the Donnell Library sale are now being exported to Brooklyn with proposed sales of Brooklyn libraries like the Brooklyn Heights and Pacific Branch libraries.

The sale of the Brooklyn Heights Library, closely replicating the sale and shrinkage involved in the Donnell sell-off, involves a much smaller future Brooklyn Heights library.  Ostensibly, according to the library administration officials looking to justify its sale, the Brooklyn Heights Library will be smaller because half of its services, operations and programming, what is referred to as its Business and Career functions, will be moved out of the central downtown  Brooklyn business district.  To the extent that those operations actually carry forward and exist in the future (Brooklyn Public Library officials say they will still exist) they will be moved into the Grand Army Plaza main branch library beside Prospect Park.  In a consolidating shrinkage much like the NYPL's Central Library Plan, the physical space of the Grand Army Plaza branch is not being expanded to accommodate the arrival of these Brooklyn Heights Library's programs, functions, resources and books.

When Josh Nachowitz, spokesperson for the BPL (formerly, before the advent of library sales, at EDC, the Mayor's real estate development agency) was confronted about the fact that there wouldn't be room for the half of the Brooklyn Heights Library to be put into the Grand Army Plaza he countered with the assertion that there would be plenty of room.

At a community board committee meeting I challenged Mr. Nachowitz, saying that the only way they would have room would be because the administration was getting rid of books.  Mr. Nachowitz said that what the BPL is doing, “in no way means we are eliminating books . .  getting rid of books”  scoffing “We are a library; the whole point of a library is that we provide books for free.”  But, echoing the way that the Central Library Plan banishes books from 42nd Street Reference Library’s research stacks to southern New Jersey in Princeton, he explained how space can somehow become available without, in his opinion, actually “eliminating books.”  Says Nachowitz: “We’re taking a central book processing function” (also described by Mr. Nochowitz and his cohorts as a “back office opertaion”) from the Grand Army Plaza Library and “a lot of staff” and “moving that to a central processing facility that we are sharing with the New York Public Library.”  At that removed and shared location the staff will be “taking books in, books come in, they stamp them, they put them into their computer system and they send them out again.”

Mr. Nachowitz says this facilitates moving “books around the system” and that’s its “cheaper.”
No matter: The “cheaper” system means that the books won’t be at the libraries, and, despite the BPL’s claims of greater efficiency, things don’t always go well with the delivery systems.  Citizens Defending Libraries is getting complaints by users of the system like the following: After making a first visit to the library and then having to order a book not on the premises, patrons notified to make the second trek to pick up their book discover that the ordered book hasn’t actually arrived.  (At least one woman blamed the library staff and proclaimed the Brooklyn Heights Library an unsatisfactory library as a result.)

Are the books already beginning to disappear from the BPL's Grand Army Plaza library in preparation to absorb the Brooklyn Heights and/or other libraries in the future?  Here are some pictures.

Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza Library does have a copy of "The Chief"

There are library patrons who are telling Citizens Defending Libraries that when they go to Grand Army Plaza to get books they need in connection with their business, librarians tell them that the books aren't there anymore and have been sent to the Brooklyn Heights Library.  That seems strangely on the verge of a shell game or runaround if the Brooklyn Heights Library's books are about to be sent to Grand Army Plaza.

What's happening at the Brooklyn Heights Library?  Are they paring down that library's book collections in preparation for a consolidating shrinkage?  The pictures tell the story.  As you look at them, it is important to remember that although the the BPL has expressed an intent to sell and shrink the Brooklyn Heights Library, it has, through Mr. Nachowitz, represented to the public that there won't be subtractions from its services before required public hearings about whether the real estate should be sold.

Business and Career Library shelves

Business and Career Library shelves

Business and Career Library shelves

Know your rights, know the law!  In this library you may think you've lost them all

Arrow to "Biographies"?

Children's Library

Children's Library

Children's Library

Trips to nowhere?

General library Biography section

Books on religion need to be culled down to this?

Plays

In the Biography section there is still one Copy of "Bloomberg by Bloomberg"

I was pleased to see that the library still had one copy of "Bloomberg by Bloomberg," the 1997 biography Bloomberg issued about himself  as he got ready to go into politics (and become substantially richer as mayor afterwards). When I wanted to review its content in the fall of 2009 (I was writing about how Bloomberg's "charity" isn't really charity), I went to the library for a copy because I neither wanted to buy the book nor give Bloomberg a royalty for it.  I see that the library has since added two copies of the adulatory Joyce Purnick biography of Bloomberg.

The Brooklyn Public Library has one copy of David Nasaw's "The Chief," but no other Hearst biographies of which there are many.

I checked to see whether the Brooklyn Heights Library, unlike the Mid-Manhattan, had a copy of  "The Chief."  It did, but unlike the Mid-Manhattan, it had none of the other many William Randolph Hearst biographies.  The library had no copies of the '60s television series "The Avengers," having never bought any, but I did have a good conversation with a librarian about what an outstanding role model the Mrs. Peel character is for girls.  It was noted that "The Avengers" can be watched on Netflix.  I haven't yet invested in a subscription.

I had one scare over which I would have been aghast.  I was told that library no longer had a copy of "The Federalist Papers."  I had quickly obtained a copy of the "The Federalist Papers" there in the fall of 2009.  I was told that the book, part of the libraries "floating collection," was not on site.  It turned out the information was wrong and a dedicated librarian, correcting himself, ran out to find me on the street and deliver it to me after realizing that "The Federalist Papers"could be found on premises.

Mistake corrected: The Heights Library did have a copy of "The Federalist Papers"

I'm told by librarians that a certain amount of annual culling of a library's collection is appropriate.  Certain books, like some kinds of science books, become out of of date over time, so unless you are researching how science has progressed from one point of view to another over the years, some older books should come off the shelves.   The librarians point out to me that if the budget is not sufficient to restock the shelves with newer replacement science books the collection could thereby dwindle.  As there is underfunding, that could provide explanation for some recent shrinkage.

Alternatively, some books don't lose their value over time and I am told that Anne Coriston's directives have included instructions to remove "shabby" (as well as duplicate) books from the shelves, something that doesn't make sense to librarians when you might be talking about rare or limited editions.

It is also true that that in certain instances, certain data publishers have gone digital. Phone books are used less often; instead we go to the internet and get the phone number we seek mixed with some advertising.

The absence of books in the library can be seen from the street at night when the library is closed.  If and when the library is actually sold off to a developer for development will we look in to see worse?

Are physical books unimportant to the library of the future?  See: Publishers Weekly-  Pew Survey Shows Power of Print, Jun 25, 2013.  The demand for physical books at the library is not going down or being replaced by digital books: Although the NYPL has 84,000 e-book titles available only 7.3% of the books being checked out are e-books.

The bigger subject of why digital books are not adequate substitutions for physical books is too big and complicated to get into here at this time, but suppose we set that subject aside long enough to ask whether we can have the kind of libraries we value without librarians, because we are getting rid of librarians also. Librarians, like library books, require space.  (Unless they are the ethereal, half-vanished librarian haunting the library in "Ghostbusters.")  Sometimes the space librarians use and require is back office space, the kind of space that isn’t necessarily accessible to the general public and which library administration officials cheerily tell us they can get rid of without consequence.

Maybe an even simpler question should be asked: Forget entirely about the space we are taking away from them for a minute. . . If we still truly value our libraries, would we be cutting their funding drastically at a time of greatly increasing use when the city is growing and wealthier than it has been in years?  If that answer is the self-evident negative I believe it must be, can’t we then intuit that all these other subtractions of library resources being thrust upon us by the same people who are underfunding our libraries are just as equally ill advised?

The bump up in blue line representing funding above corresponds to Bloomberg's pursuit of his third term.  The drastic decline while use is rising corresponds to his administration's pursuit of library sell-offs

One thing is certain: If we let library and city administration officials get rid of the libraries' book collections, then, by definition, what we are left with in the end won't actually be libraries at all.

Above: The EDC and BPL RFP for sale of the Brooklyn Heights Library, a few photos of the library overlaid-  There were no photos of the library in the RFP.

I am about to tell you story about how much more benefit will be going to Forest City Ratner than the public has officially been told, if and when the Brooklyn Heights Public Library is ever sold for shrinkage as library and city administration officials are still working hard to make happen.

It is a story that has been hiding in plain sight.  You would know it by now if our press were more diligent or if library and city administration officials were more forthright about conveying information about what they are actually up to in pushing the Brooklyn Heights Library sale.  I guess that’s where the blogs have a special and important role in this new, out-of-kilter world we live in.

I have been holding off on this story to see what else might fall into place before I reported it.  I will say this: I don’t have all the answers to go along with the many facts reported here, but I’ve got plenty of really good questions that people should be asking.

Hang in for some surprising revelations about how much benefit stands to go to Forest City Ratner and how little benefit will go to the public with a sale of the Brooklyn Heights Library while we first review some background.

Early Suspicions About Forest City Ratner And The Libraries

Most people who have already been following the story of the library sell-offs have been suspicious of Forest City Ratner.  Although, the Brooklyn Public Library’s strategic plan calls for `leveraging’ all of the real estate on which its libraries sit (in other words monkeying around like this with real estate sales), the first two library sell-offs it has been trying to push out the door are two libraries, the Brooklyn Heights Library and the Pacific Branch, that are right next to property Forest City Ratner owns, acquired from the city on a no-bid basis.

Further, as reported here before, when the Brooklyn Public Library was announcing the sale of Brooklyn Heights Library and Josh Nachowitz, spokesperson for the Brooklyn Public Library, was asked about what would be done, he immediately, and without even having to think about it, refused to entertain the possibility that the BPL might disqualify or blackball Ratner as a future owner of the Brooklyn library property it was selling off.  That reflexive refusal was notwithstanding the fact that Forest City Ratner already has a very dangerously large government-assisted monopoly in Brooklyn and a record of failing to deliver on public benefit promises, with a history of blackmailing the public to change terms of agreements.  See: Sunday, February 3, 2013, What Could We Expect Forest City Ratner Would Do With Two Library Sites On Sale For The Sake Of Creating Real Estate Deals?   

Mr. Nachowitz moved to the library system from the Bloomberg administration’s city real estate development agency the New York City Economic Development Corp. (EDC) just in time to preside over these sell-offs and, as you will see as we proceed, EDC is involved in selling off the Brooklyn Heights Library.

Plans To Sell Libraries With Money Not Coming To The Libraries

From the beginning it has seemed odd that library administration officials would have decided that is it beneficial to be selling off a valuable library property like the Brooklyn Heights Library (or the Pacific Branch) if the money from that sale wasn’t going to the library.  The money from any sale goes to the city that, in turn, under Bloomberg, has decided that the libraries should be underfunded (at a time of skyrocketing use) and there is plenty of reason to believe city conduct would continue in this vein as libraries were sold. 

When BPL president Linda Johnson first publicly discussed the selling of libraries with the Daily News in October 2011, she admitted that the BPL was making plans to sell the libraries even though the rules meant that “the library wouldn't see a dime” of the sale proceeds money because it would go into the city's general fund.  (See: Sunday, March 3, 2013, The Petition To Save The Libraries Is Working: Confirming Petition Points BPL Head Linda Johnson, Library Officials Trip Up Defending Plans.)

Johnson did not mention in her interview with the Daily News that an important library like the Brooklyn Heights Library was one of the ones that would be put on the sales block.  Plans were in place.  We now know for certain that, even though the information was being withheld from the public, the BPL had decided to shrink and sell the Brooklyn Heights Library long before this.  Mr. Nachowitz told one reporter preparing a story about the library sell-offs that the decision had been made back in 2008.  Although we do not vouch for her reliability, Deborah Hallen of the Friends of the Brooklyn Library group has also asserted that she discovered from Mr. Nachowitz that this decision was secretly made by library administration officials at least as far back as 2008.

The Nation's current cover story by Scott Sherman reports on early communications with the Bloomberg administration to sell off NYC libraries

In fact, it may have been made much sooner.  The Donnell Library sale that the sale-for-shrinkage of the Brooklyn Heights Library is largely modeled after was announced by the NYPL in 2007 after a secretive process that netted the NYPL less than $39 million, far less than it was worth and a faction of what it would cost to replace.  (See: Monday, May 27, 2013, More Thoughts On Valuation And What The NYPL Should Have Received As Recompense For The Public When It Sold The Donnell Library.)  And, we know from the development community that in the summer of 2007 the BPL had a long list of libraries that were being looked at for similar sale and redevelopment. In 2007 the NYPL met with Mayor Bloomberg and his First Deputy Mayor Patti Harris about library sales with Ms. Harris expressing "initial enthusiasm" in June of that year.

It was not until late May of 2013, long after these library sales were planned, and long after Noticing New York was shining a spotlight on the way those deals weren’t for public benefit, did the BPL unveil an eyewash MOU ("Memorandum of Understanding")  (Dated May 21, 2013) for the purpose of making it appear as if the city might send some of the library sale proceeds to help make up for its pattern of deliberate funding deficiencies.

There is something called a "Community Advisory Committee" that is meeting to be informed about the sale of the Brooklyn Heights Library for the sake of having a colorable public process.  The BPL has made an effort to stack that committee predominantly with community representatives it has previously vetted as favoring or condoning the library sale, like the Brooklyn Heights Association and the (now deceptively named) Friends of the Brooklyn Heights Library.  Partly through the efforts of Citizens Defending Libraries (of which I am a co-founder) this “CAC” group also has local electives representative on it.   At the May 23rd CAC meeting, in connection with which the MOU was unveiled, elected representatives expressed dismay and consternation that the agreement made little pretense of being truly enforceable or otherwise being effective in ensuring that the BPL would actually garner proceeds from a library sale.

One-page library MOU: Cause for consternation and joking

In response, BPL spokesman Josh Nachowitz dismissed the important of the ineffectiveness of the MOU, saying that some MOUs get honored and some don't (they just "get thrown out") and that with an upcoming change of many elected officials throughout the city (he cited: new Mayor, new City Council, new Speaker of the City Council, new Borough President, new Planning Commissioner, new Deputy Mayor for Economic Development, new Economic Development Corporation President, new head of Council Finance, new head of committee for Fine Arts, even new library officials such as himself) it was a "fluid environment" and there was "no assurance" the MOU would be honored, saying "we are not going to do something that is completely and totally irrevocable that can't be changed by a new administration."

More Bad News About Why The Public Won’t Get Money Expected From The Library Sale

Now here is something even more startling about how the public won’t benefit from sale proceeds if the Brooklyn Heights Library is sold.  It is something we are hearing about, with some consternation, from real estate professionals working on responses to the so-called “Request For Proposals” (RFP) that the City and the BPL have issued to sell the Brooklyn Heights Library and build a much smaller replacement and, like Donnell, shift above-ground library space underground.

On July 17th EDC, the city’s Economic Development Corporation, Josh Nachowitz’s former agency, held developer information sessions in connection with the RFP.  I attended one of them and would have gone to both if that had been permitted. Mr. Nachowitz was there to participate in the presentation.

Provision in recorded document transferring development rights to the Ratner property

The developeablility of the library site was discussed.  An EDC official informed those attending that they should make their own calculations, but that the EDC measured the library site to be a conservative 26,600 square feet, just possibly a little more, maybe up to 27,000 square feet.  This is important for determining the size of the permitted building envelope for any replacement building using FAR (Floor to Area Ratio calculations).  The library property is in a C6-4 district, with an FAR of 10, the highest permitted residential FAR in the city (with bonuses, allowing it to go to 12).  In other words, the 26,600 square foot library site multiplied by an FAR of 10 allows for  266,000 buildable square feet.  But here is the thing (and the information was stated in a very matter-of-fact way at the developers information session, almost as if its importance was insignificant): in 1986, 140,919 square feet of those buildable rights, 53% (or 52.977% to be ultra-exact), were conveyed to Forest City Ratner.

Shaded area on the city tax map above is the Brooklyn Heights Library site from which substantial development rights were transferred away to  Forest City Ratner

That means that if they allow the Brooklyn Heights Library to be demolished, city officials and the BPL have significantly less to sell than the public might be inclined to presume.  It goes far beyond a 50% reduction in potential net sales proceeds.  It is much more than that because demolition and reconstruction of new facilities are expensive and must count for a significant percentage against the net benefit of any possible rebuilding.  That is why property owners don’t often tear down and build new buildings when the zoning permits them to build only a little bit bigger.  Similarly, it is why most homeowners would not tear down their home to rebuild a replacement if the new structure would/could only be a little bit bigger.  But if the homeowner's new building was going to be a lot bigger that would be a different story.  Do you go to the trouble of tearing down a two-story library with underground space when all that you can sell is the right to build a five-story library in which there must be a replacement library?  How much cash can you rake in for the public doing that?                           

End of story?  Does this comport with the reports that we were getting that library officials were internally talking about how the new, probably residential, building replacing the library might be 40 stories?  No, and no.

We are hearing that architects looking at the site for purposes of RFP are thinking about the need for a zoning change.  That might chagrin the Brooklyn Heights Association if they are telling people not to worry and that they shouldn’t expect a zoning change.  That is probably not the answer, or at least probably the whole of it.

Bruce Ratner's signature on one of the set of documents where development rights were transferred from the library site to his

Expectation Of A Tall Building, Taller Than Its Surroundings

EDC and library officials at the developers meeting were clearly selling the idea that when the library building site was redeveloped the new building would be at tall one.   The following statements came right at the beginning of the EDC’s official’s oral presentation (it’s cute how it traffics in selling the supremacy of a potential project by emphasizing how it won't be subject to the same restrictions as its neighbors):

The views around the area are fantastic.  So, that particular location has on the west side, it has a low height district.  So it’s zoned on the west side, that residential area, is zoned to have a height no more than 50 feet [essentially five stories].  That’s on one side of the project.  On the other side is Cadman Plaza so that’s a beautiful park.  There’s another beautiful park that you have views over.  So really, you have fantastic views all around.

    * * * *.

It’s located outside the Brooklyn Heights Historic District and the limited height district, so that’s the limited height district I was talking about earlier. .  So this is outside of that.

The written portion of the RFP is similar, if a tad more cautiously phrased:

The site. . .overlooks the picturesque Cadman Plaza Park in the heart of Brooklyn’s Civic Center . .  The site enjoys park viwes to the east with the prospect of achieving views of Manhattan and Brooklyn skylines, as well as of the New York Harbor and bridges.

What would be the advantage of developing a project for its western views over toward the harbor over neighboring buildings that are limited to a five-story height restriction if your own new building, with 50%+ development rights transferred out, can only be about five stories or a little bit taller.  Conforming to the FAR  restrictions, one way to make building taller is to stack up the floors in a more needle-like fashion, using a smaller building footprint.  The library building footprint is small enough that the building built there will probably be squatter, taking up a fair portion of the site.

What Forest City Ratner Has To Sell

But where will the development rights come from to build the taller building seemingly presumed?  Normally, they would have to come form an adjacent building on the same block.  The only property adjacent to the library is the Forest City Ratner building, One Pierrepont Plaza (also know by its original address of 159 Pierrepont Street). . .

. . . Is it possible that Forest City Ratner still has those buildable rights unused to transfer back?  It would seem unlike a developer let acquired development rights go unused.*  And one would think that we should not expect city officials to transfer city-owned development rights to a developer when they were not needed.   Steve Spinola, now President of REBNY (the Real Estate Board of New York), was the city official handling the transaction with Ratner at the time.

(* Although, we have to remember that Forest City Ratner threatened to stop construction and build only a portion of its Gehry-designed 8 Spruce Street Beekman Tower building.- See: Downtown Housing Complex May Downsize, Thursday, March 19, 2009.)  

I checked, and, as far as I can discern, there has been no upzoning of the properties since the rights were transferred to Forest City Ratner that would now make those rights surplus so they could be transferred back.  Nevertheless, it is not clear that the Ratner property actually needs those rights that the city officials transferred to it in 1986.

Public records put the size of the Forest City Ratner One Pierrepont Plaza site at about 45,780 square feet.  Those numbers should never be complacently relied upon, but when I worked to do my own calculations the slightly larger figure I got was very close to this number.   The Forest City Ratner building is a commercial building so the permitted FAR is 15 under the zoning.  That would come to a permitted buildable FAR of about 691,845.00 square feet.

Shaded area on city tax map above is One Pierrepont Plaza/135 Pierrepont Street site owned by Forest City Ratner.  Rectangular shape at south wrapped around by it is 153/157 Pierrepont Street owned by Saint Ann's School

How much of the permitted amount has Forest City Ratner actually used in building its building?  The merger of zoning lots document, on the public records, refers to the Ratner building as having a permitted 601,079 square foot building floor area figure.      

Forest City Ratner’s own website boasts that the building is built on the One Pierrepont Plaza site is only 659,000 square feet; that makes it look like Forest City Ratner might be able to transfer all of the library's rights back if somebody wanted to pay the right price.

Beforehand, in 1985, the New York Times reported that Ratner was only going to build a 600,000-square-foot building.  One real estate website has the Ratner building figured at 725,991 square feet and with an FAR that is a little over what is permitted (same thing with Property Shark) but which would still not use up the 140,919 square feet that was transferred from the library to Forest City Ratner in 1986.

So Ratner may actually have the development rights to send back for a price.  But here is another important thing to consider: There’s another way to bring more development rights to the site, so long as Forest City Ratner remains the gateway for the transaction: There is another property on the block using less than its permitted development rights, 153/157 Pierrepont Street owned by Saint Ann’s School.

The entire block, Ratner Property highlighted, showing what, with Ratner cooperation, could be treated as a single merged zoning lot to transfer development rights from Saint Ann's School to the library site

Above, Saint Ann School building with development rights that are not yet utilized.  Ratner property is in the background, literally and metaphorically

The Saint Ann’s property on the block is about 3,979 square feet (these calculations seem to approximately check) and the building is reported to be 27,680 square feet which probably leaves it with about 32,005 square feet of rights to transfer to the library site which could be easily done if it merges zoning lots with the Forest City Ratner property.  Both developer information sessions that day were attended by Matthew Bloom, Director of Finance and Administration for Saint Ann’s School.  (At one point, during the meeting I was at, Mr. Bloom introduced himself to the room and the EDC representative suggested that the developers in the room be in touch with him, but that was about providing space for a temporary library, the subject Mr. Bloom raised, not about development rights.) 
Are there other ways that Rater could be the conduit of additional development rights to further increase the height of the library building?  Indeed there might be, but that a gets into a level of zoning arcana mixed with speculative guessing I am not willing to take on in this article: Ways of connecting Saint Ann's buildings, Bank vaults, tunnels, street condemnations, whether cultural space like the library space (or even Saint Ann's) counts against the permitted heights on the merged zoning lots.  Interesting to note: Those working on the recent creation of the nearby Downtown Brooklyn skyscraper district said that the Brooklyn Heights Library block was intentional excluded from it. 

The Sale Gets Pitched: Public Officials Working for Forest City Ratner’s Benefit?

Neighborhood Amenities in the RFP

Whether or not Forest City Ratner becomes the library site developer in order to profit, all of this is likely to mean that:

    a.)  a lot, or most of the development rights for the building to be built to replace the library are coming from or through Ratner and Ratner gets to keep the lion’s share of the proceeds for these development rights, while

    b.) at the same time the net proceeds going in any way to the public are much reduced because of the demolition and rebuilding costs together with what the public loses as it tries to operate with a smaller temporary replacement library for some number of years.

If so, then any city-paid public or library administration official making the sales pitch hawking library development rights are actually working more for the benefit of Forest City Ratner than for the public.

The city EDC and library administration officials were, indeed, hawking the value of the development rights big time at the July 17th developers information session:

    . . I’m going to discuss the highlights of Brooklyn Heights, and you know, more than most people, what those entail I’m sure.  But, to talk about the prime location here: I’ve said this before, we do talk about prime development opportunities a lot at EDC; we use that phrase, we bandy it about fairly frequently-- This particular project really is a prime development opportunity. [appreciative developer laughter] It’s located at the heart of Brooklyn Heights.  So it’s really the nexus between Brooklyn Heights and Downtown Brooklyn, so we have the residential neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights to the west and then you have the financial hub of Downtown Brooklyn to the east and it really is the nexus, the apex of both of those locations, both of those districts.

    The residential neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights is among the most desirable in New York City, and that’s New York City, not Brooklyn.  The sales comps that we are seeing in that area, whilst we are not brokers, and we wouldn’t want to tell you how to write your pro formas, are ahead of $1000 per square foot in that location.  It’s a beautiful residential area and we want to be able to service that community as well as the surrounding downtown neighborhood.

    It’s accessible to numerous transit lines.  So you have the Jay Street hub, you have the Borough Hall hub, the subway lines.  You have Clark Street, Court Street, High Street, all of these different subway lines are serviced at this location. There are parts of Manhattan that are not as well serviced as this particular site and you’re able to get to downtown Manhattan within minutes.  I live on the Upper West Side and it takes me over half an hour to get to work here and it takes anyone else from Brooklyn heights or that neighborhood less than five minutes.

To reiterate, the sales pitch, like the sale of the library itself, is more for the benefit of a developer, Ratner, than the public, the kind of thing that Citizens Defending Libraries has been pointing out since it was created in February to challenge these real estate deals.

Libraries And Their Relationship To Public Transit Benefits

From the RFP- The ease of access transportation from which the library site benefits- Click to enlarge

The sales pitch that easy accessability by public transportation is a good thing is correct.  Easily accessible transit is also desirable to consider when locating libraries.  When Citizens Defending Libraries met with the NYPL’s Chief Operating Officer, David Offensend, explained that one reason that the NYPL sold the Donnell Library to shrink it was that its services could be relocated, “better located,” to places that “would better serve the patrons, so the Central Children’s Room, for example, came here [the 42nd Street library], a far more convenient location for children and families, frankly, than 53rd Street, there’s more public transportation.”

Was Donnell in central Manhattan really that ill-served by subway lines?  Whether that may have been so, moving library services out of the superbly accessible Brooklyn Heights and downtown neighborhood is certain to significantly diminish public services.

Gatekeeping vs. Owning To Make a Profit

There has been a lot of speculation about whether Forest City Ratner, with the inside track (and certainly all these factors help put it on the inside track), will ultimately become the actual developer of the library site, but what should be discernable from the discussion above is that it is not necessary for Forest City Ratner to itself become the owner or developer of the library site in order for it to profit greatly from the transaction.  Ownership of real estate is not a prerequisite to making a profit; sometimes it is enough to be the gatekeeper of development.  One way we see this now is with very recent events with Atlantic Yards, a mega-monopoly bequeathed Forest City Ratner, by our government officials. . .

. . .  It has been recently reported that Forest City Ratner is trying to sell the substantial majority of its interest in that mega-project to an investor.  (See: Thursday, August 22, 2013, Times: Forest City's trying to sell up to 80% of Atlantic Yards (and didn't extended deadlines help Ratner gain "layup"?).)  This divestiture would be in lieu of complying with suggestions from the community that the government break up the mega-project to bid it out amongst multiple developers (something necessarily now legally under consideration as part of the new environmental assessment that is being done).  With Forest City Ratner selling out to an investor this way instead, Forest City Ratner retains its development gatekeeper function.  That gatekeeping function would arguably be better held by the government.  Additionally, any big investor brought in is likely to help Ratner lobby against any proposed break up the mega-monopoly.

Another factor giving Forest City Ratner another inside track with respect to the development of the library site is that the developers at the information meeting were told that, aside from the zoning:

    . . . this particular site is subject to a special permit, which you may have read in the RFP, that was awarded to the One Pierrepont Plaza lot next door [to Ratner] so the FAR and the height and setbacks are specified in the special permit, in fact, not in general C6-4 zoning so please bear that in mind, and if you want to look into this further you should buy a site file which has a special permit. .

The “site file” was being made available on CDs EDC was producing.  Although those CDs must cost mere pennies to burn and are probably also obtainable through a freedom of information at request, EDC was only making them available to those paying $50.00 for the privilege of getting one.

At the meeting, I also asked about the garage currently existing under the Ratner property and the possibility for a combined garage which would give Ratner yet another inside track.  You can see if you can spot my questions in the paraphrased questions and answers from the two information session EDC has published at its website.

Will the RFP award the library property to the highest bidder?  Not necessarily, and there are conundrums to be hurdled about how the final results will be achieved.  Part of this ties in with how the tangles involved in so-called public-private partnerships are manipulable (too frequently for what turns out to be  private benefit).  In the end, outside the outlines of formal RFP, the BPL will be negotiating with the developers for them to do the “outfitting,” or the build-out of the `replacement’ library.  It seems as if it will probably be done in such a way that the developer works with the BPL to avoid application of the city’s Wicks minimum wage law.  This will be a big-ticket item despite the planned shrinkage of the library.  The negotiation presents a way of swinging the contract outside of the formal bidding.

"Zoning Calculation" requirement from RFP

The contract doesn’t necessarily go to the highest bidder anyway.  Feasibility will be judged.  One thing affecting both potential for achieving a high bid price and the ability to present a convincing “zoning calculation” for feasibility sake is, according to the RFP language “Zoning calculations and analysis should reflect the entire zoing lot (including Lt 1) and address the special permits and zoning requirements referenced in the Declarations and Approved Plans.’  In other words: `Deal with Forest City Ratner.'

The BPL won't announce any details about the bids and bidders when they come in.  We'll all wait in suspense as the negotiate behind the scenes.


City Officials Represent They Have Not Been Dealing With Ratner

Near the end of the information session there was a question about whether there were issues with One Pierrepont Plaza that might not be showing up, whether there was, for instance, any granting of easements for light or air, that might not show up.  The question evoked this denial that there had been any previous communications with Forest City Ratner:

    Well, we haven’t spoken with, uhm, Forest City, ah, yet about this particular project since it’s not really underway.  What we can tell you, uhm, is that, ah, we believe that during the ULURP process, ah, because they were co-applicants, uhm, on the special permit they may need to consent to a modification of the special permit.  Uhm, but that’s the only, ah, thing that we foresee, uhm, we can’t foresee any other issues with Forest City.

So, without talking to Forest City Ratner, a decision was made to sell the library when half of its development rights were sold off and the only way to get back development rights for the project expected to be built would be to get them through Forest City Ratner?  Really?

A Lock On Value Where Ratner Holds The Key

The perspicacity of that question is greater if you consider that one reason that the Donnell Library was theoretically sold for such a very odd low price is because the owners of 666 Fifth Avenue had a light and air easement from the library, potentially interfering with the development.  It didn’t decrease Donnell’s value to the public as a library, but it did make getting value from any sale more complex.  What the questioner didn’t seem to realize was that the answer to his question was staring him in the face: In a fashion essentially similar to Donnell, the development rights to the Heights library had been conveyed out to Ratner so that anyone will have to deal with Ratner to get them back.

The introduction to EDC’s RFP says the RFP “presents a unique opportunity to . .  unlock economic development prospects in an increasingly valued  location,”; it just doesn’t say that Forest City Ratner has the key to the lock or is the one probably going to get the lion’s share of the benefit.

Public Officials Must Stand Guard

In the end, it's all going to come down to our politicians and elected representatives to prevent these absurdities for which only the public in the end pays.  Particularly important are those who may come into office in this current election cycle.  Over the years, Forest City Ratner has been a long-standing and certified nemesis for many.  One of them, City Council member Tish James, is now engaged in a campaign for Public Advocate in a Democratic primary now headed for final determination in an October 1st runoff election between Ms. James and state Senator Daniel Squadron.  The Forest City Ratner involvement in spearheading the sale of our libraries could wind up being a boon to Tish James' campaign. . .

. . . Tish James has not only been fighting against the sale of New York City libraries since these plans were unveiled, she led the fight against Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards mega-monopoly.  Squadron, her opponent in the race, was condoning the sale and shrinkage of the Brooklyn Heights Library, with the moving of its Business and Career Library out of the business district and away from the vaunted subway access and mass transportation access it now enjoys.  Squadron has also been taking campaign money from the NYPL’s David Offensend, a key player in formulating and pushing deals for the sell-off of public libraries.

Noticing New York previously wrote about how the public funds infused into Ratner/Prokhorov “Barclays” arena to create private profit for Ratner are likely now coming to help finance and push the behind-the-scenes drive for things like the sell-off of our libraries and hospitals like Long Island College Hospital (LICH) at the other end of Brooklyn Heights.   See: Tuesday, April 30, 2013, Relevance of Mayoral Debate Discussion About Forest City Ratner Atlantic Yards Misconduct To The Sale and Underfunding of NYC Libraries.

One half hour before the kickoff of his runoff campaign Mr. Squadron issued a press statement his campaign handed out at the kickoff press conference, saying that he now opposes the library sales.   Mr. Squadron’s new position needs to be amplified and clarified, but it is evident that the Citizens Defending Libraries campaign is having its effects.

Because the Public Advocate’s job is to serve as check and balance, keeping the Mayor’s office on track in terms of serving the public good, who gets elected as Public Advocate will be significant for the libraries.

The Mayor And The Library Sell-offs

How important is it who becomes Mayor?  It is the Mayor who largely determines the budget for libraries, but because the city’s libraries are technically run by three not for the profit corporations, the NYPL, the BPL and the Queens Library, people every now and then request Citizens Defending Libraries provide extra convincing evidence that it is Mayor Bloomberg, underfunding the libraries, who is behind these sales and is trying to push them through before he leaves office.

Last week, WNET’s Metrofocus put up this slide of information (below) provided by Mayor Bloomberg about what he wants to accomplish before leaving office.  It says he wants to push through the NYPL’s Central Library Plan, and (something potentially related to its real estate sell-off plans) he wants to push through the extreme upzoning of Mid-Manhattan around Grand Central Terminal. 
The information from Michael Bloomberg’s website engages in the deceptive characterization of the Central Library Plan’s as creating the “largest circulating and research library in the world” when it is actually a shrinkage and sale of libraries, reducing more than 380,000 square feet of library space to just 80,000 square feet.   (Examined at length here: Saturday, July 13, 2013, Deceptive Representations By New York Public Library On Its Central Library Plan: We’re NOT Shrinking Library Space, We Are Making MORE Library Space!)  What Bloomberg is talking about is selling two of NYC’s most important Manhattan libraries and destroying a third.

Respecting the Brooklyn Heights Library, BPL spokesman Josh Nachowitz has said that it is the goal of library and city officials to have a contract for its sale executed with a developer before December 31st, the last day of Bloomberg’s final term.

Meanwhile, as all these transactions are benefitting the wealthy at the expense of the public, money is flowing uphill in this city to the wealthiest.  Bloomberg’s annually increasing wealth just jumped again, this time from $27 billion to $31 billion in the last six months.  In 1979, the year he declared his interest in politics in his  biography, shortly before running for mayor his wealth (the digits reverse and a decimal point shifted)  was $1.3 billion.

Thankfully, Bloomberg will soon be out of office and Citizens Defending Libraries has brought Democratic mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio to the cause of opposing the sale of the cities libraries, including the Central Library Plan and the sale of the Brooklyn Heights Library.  It is interesting to note that New York Times martini glass graph of de Blasio’s support shows his support fanning out to grow terrifically as of the July date when he held a press conference to oppose these library sales with Citizens Defending Libraries and the Committee to Save the New York Public Library on the steps of the 42nd Street library.  All library-related support?  Probably not, still the library issues are emblematic of other "Tale of Two Cities" issues where public assets are being sold off for other than public benefit, issues that went far to earn de Blasio his support.

But it is going to require more stories like this one that shine light on these transactions to keep our elected representatives on track protecting the public.

From Citizens Defending Libraries YouTube video of rally in April outside the Brooklyn Heights Library, one of the libraries threatened to be sold off

There is an October 1st runoff of the race for the Public Advocate.  Letitia James, the City Council member famous for taking on Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards government-assisted mega-monopoly actually won the Democratic primary for that nomination, but by just a few percentage points shy of what she needed to avoid a runoff race.  She is now running against Daniel Squadron, the runner-up who outspent Ms. James by more than two-to-one in that original primary.  In all, Ms. James, who was running against four other Democratic candidates, was outspent more than four-to-one in that first leg of the race almost winning the forty percent nonetheless.

The issue of selling off New York City libraries is now shaping up to be a big issue in the race, getting a lot of spotlighting focus.

The Issue?:  Our libraries are being emptied of books (devastating pictures here) in preparation for selling them off in real estate deals intended to benefit developers, not the public.   The Brooklyn Heights Library is one of the first libraries being sold in a deal where it looks like most of the proceeds and most of the benefit of any such sale will go to Forest City Ratner, whether or not Forest City Ratner officially takes over the library as formally-named developer of the site.  See:  Friday, September 20, 2013, Forest City Ratner As The Development Gatekeeper (And Profit taker) Getting The Benefit As Brooklyn Heights Public Library Is Sold.  Forest City Ratner?: Tish James is going to feel right in her element taking them on again as it becomes part of the library fight she has taken on.

Tish James Opposes Bloomberg Sell-Off of NYC Libraries

Ms. James has been opposing the sale of New York City libraries since the city-wide plans for these sales first came to light as can been seen in a series of videos available on Citizens Defending Libraries YouTube Channel (March 8, 2013, April 13, 2013, and June 30, 2013, - and Ms. James visited other Citizens Defending Libraries events as well) and is made clear in Ms. James Huffington Post/Brooklyn Eagle Op-Ed piece:  Shrinking the Library System Is A Loss for New Yorkers (August 21, 2013) and OPINION: Shrinking the library system is a loss for New Yorkers (August 29, 2013).  Note:  I am a cofounder of Citizens Defending Libraries and a promoter of its petition against the sale of city libraries for the benefit of developers.



Letitia James & Stephen Levin Fight Library Selloff Schemes (From the June 30th Micah Kellner State Assembly hearings on the sell-off NYC libraries where Tish James spoke against such sell-offs.  State Senator Velmanette Montgomery attended and made a statement.  State Senator Daniel Squadron did not attend or provide a statement opposing the sales.)

Squadron Campaign Recognition of Library Sell-offs Relevance to Runoff Campaign For Public Advocate

Proof that the library sell-offs is becoming a focus of the campaign is presenting itself in multiple ways.  One of them: Just a half hour before Daniel Squadron’s kickoff press conference to launch his runoff campaign Squadron released a press release (also handed out at the press event) with his new position on the library sell-offs.  The statement says he is now against them.  His campaign sent his statement to Citizens Defending Libraries at the same time.  There will be more analysis about where Mr. Squadron actually now stands and about clarifying questions Citizens Defending Libraries has asked him to answer as we proceed. . .

Mayoral candidate de Blasio with Citizens Defending Libraries at 42nd Street library in July

In any event, it is strange to think that any elected representative or candidate running for office would ever openly favor the sell-off and shrinkage of New York City libraries.  Christine Quinn favored the library sales and shrinkages, but she did not do so very openly.  As it was, she lost the race of for the Democratic nomination for mayor while Bill de Blasio, the candidate who triumped handily in beating her, stood with Citizens Defending Libraries on the steps of the library at 42nd  Street to decry and call a halt to these sales.    

Linkages: Libraries and Campaign- Squadron Supporters Attacking James And Supporting Library Sell-off 

Prior to Mr. Squadron’s issuance of his campaign kickoff library press release, the first indication that people supporting Mr. Squadron see the library issue as an important campaign issue came another way: in communications from Deborah Hallen right after the election.  We'll explain who Deborah Hallen is in a moment.  The communications from Ms. Hallen attempted to attack and attempted to discredit Tish James respecting her stand on the libraries whilst arguing that the sale of the Brooklyn Heights Library is proper and publicly supportable.   (Does this involved the implication that sales of other threatened city libraries should also proceed?)

The primary election which Tish James won and Daniel Squadron lost was September 10th.  The first communication from Ms. Hallen we know of, to at least one person, was a voice mail was left the morning of the 12th at 10:46 AM.

Ms. Hallen is now the head of a 501(c)(3) ("charitable") group named (many think deceptively) “The Friends of the Brooklyn Heights Library.” This past spring, Noticing New York first wrote about how that group has been supporting the sale of the Brooklyn Heights Library and how the Brooklyn Heights Association has used that "Friends" group’s support to rationalize its similarly condoning the sale.  See: Saturday, April 13, 2013, Condoning The Sale and Shrinkage Of The Brooklyn Heights Library, Does The Brooklyn Heights Associations Think Of Friends Group As A Fig Leaf? It Should Think Again.  The Friends group, the Brooklyn Heights Association, Urban Librarians Unite?: It is worth taking the time to ask why there are a few groups like these that, surprisingly, support or won’t oppose the sell-off of new York City Libraries.

Since Noticing New York’s April 13th examination of Hallen’s "Friends" group I have provided little Noticing New York follow up about that group's activities, although a fair amount has happened in terms of Ms. Hallen’s efforts to purge from that group any alternative points of view about saving the Heights library.  We’d like to think that the very small group is relatively inconsequential in the broader scheme of things.  Indeed, it has certainly been less so after the revelations of the April 13th Noticing New York article.  After that the membership of the so-called “Community Advisory Committee” (set up to provide the appearance of a public process as the Brooklyn Heights Library is sold) was expanded to include other more credible groups to “represent” the community.  Nevertheless, Ms. Hallen on behalf of her group condoning the library sale, still "chairs" its meetings with the BPL's Josh Nachowitz, formerly of the mayor's real estate development agency.

After the April 13th article Ms. Hallen contacted us to urge us to believe the following distinction: That while the “Friends” group she is leading is going along with the sale of the Brooklyn Heights Library, she says she personally opposes seeing the library sold.

Here is a transcript of the voicemail Ms Hallen left on the 12th, the first of her communications attempting to discredit Ms. James' position on libraries.  Click on the video below to listen to the actual message itself:

Hi Martha it's Deborah Hallen, calling you,  The Friends of the Brooklyn Heights Branch Library-  and Obama. of course.  I noticed that the Citizens in Defense of Libraries [sic, actually Citizens Defending Libraries*] are supporting Tish James against Daniel Squadron. And I thought that you should know that ten years, when she was in City Council, she gave no money to the support of the Brooklyn Public Library, though she represented Central, Clinton Hill and Walt Whitman libraries and they needed tens of millions of funding requests or they made tens of millions of funding request and she gave nothing to the libraries. So I find it a little odd that the Citizens are supporting her and I thought you should know this.

Thanks and bye for now.

(* Note: We have observed that Squadron supporters exchanging information concerning how to attack Ms. James about libraries, tend to refer to Citizens Defending Libraries incorrectly as “Citizens in Defense of Libraries.”  Tish James got under Mayor Bloomberg’s skin by opposing real estate projects like Atlantic Yards, and she likes to tell stories about how Bloomberg kept calling her “Trish” full well knowing her nickname was as actually “Tish.”)


Library Sell-off Group Smears Tish, Backs Squadron  - From Citizens Defending Libraries YouTube Channel.

Deborah Hallen of the 501(c)(3) Library "Friends" Group Enters Political Fray of Public Advocate Race Attacking Tish James 

Was it appropriate for Ms. Hallen to be invoking her status as the head of a 501(c)(3), theoretically “charitable” organization as she leads into this campaign communication?  Citizens Defending Libraries, by contrast, has not organized itself as a 501(c)(3) specifically so as not to be hampered by restrictions that might, as a result, apply on speech of a political nature.

Previously, Ms. Hallen has communicated with her Friends group trustees asserting that they are restricted vis-à-vis their possible opposition to a sale of the Brooklyn Heights library. Here is what Ms. Hallen previously emailed her 501(c)(3) “Friends of the Library” Trustees when she was telling them they could not oppose the sale of the libraries:

I have been told that as a representative of the Friends (by our attorney and accountant) that we cannot oppose the impending sale 

    * * *

ALSO PLEASE UNDERSTAND that we are not in the position of trying to stop the sale. We are a 501(c) 3 Organization and have to adhere to our by-laws. Recall that our position is to have continuity of library service no matter what happens to the building.

 More Such Linkages: Into the Weeds on Funding Allegations

Mr. Squadron’s kickoff event was scheduled for Noon at Borough Hall on Sunday September 15, 2013.  At 12:09 PM, virtually the moment Squadron was supposed to start speaking and 39 minutes after Squadron had issued his press release with his new statement on libraries Ms. Hallen followed up with an email attack on Tish James and her position on saving the libraries from sale.  Perhaps awkwardly for Squadron (whose campaign seems to be feeding Hallen her information-- perhaps with additional coordination from BPL officials wanting to sell libraries) she weaves into her email statements in which she is supportive of the Brooklyn Heights Library sale:  

Letitia James was elected to the City Council in 2003; her district includes the Central Library at GAP, Walt Whitman (a historic Carnegie primarily serving the lower income community in the Whitman-Ingersoll Houses), and Clinton Hill.

BPL has met with Ms. James several times and fully briefed her on the Pacific Street project. Ms. James has claimed that she was never briefed and had no information about the project.

Clinton Hill requires over $3M in capital work and Walt Whitman over $6.5M. BPL has asked Ms. James for millions over ten years and received absolutely nothing in discretionary (called “Reso A” in Council bureaucratic language) funds. The Council (at least since 2006) has published all of their capital and expense grants (http://www.council.nyc.gov/html/budget/database.shtml). This year, for instance, BPL received discretionary capital funding from CMs Dilan, Greenfield, Lander, Gentile and Reyna. CM Dilan generously gave BPL $1M. Ms. James? Nothing.

Ms. James will claim that BPL “never asked her for money” or “didn’t ask aggressively.” This is also not true, and BPL can get you copies of letters they've sent to her asking for funds.

Ms. James will claim the current Brooklyn Heights project is being “rushed” through the approval process before the Mayor leaves office. This is demonstrably false. As you know BPL won’t even be close to starting the public approval process until mid-late next year, and this is far from a “done deal” until the extensive public review is complete. BPL has gone out of their way to be as transparent as possible and have started a dialogue with the public long before the RFP was even drafted.

The branches in James' district illustrate perfectly why BPL's project in Brooklyn Heights makes sense for the borough as a whole. The Walt Whitman Library has over $6.5M in capital needs. It’s a historic Carnegie building serving a high need population isolated in an increasingly gentrified community. BPL will generate capital revenue from Brooklyn Heights that can be plowed back into Walt Whitman and other branches just like it, borough wide. BPL strategy at Brooklyn Heights allows them to build a brand new branch in Brooklyn Heights and generate desperately needed money to pay for projects at branches like Walt Whitman.

BPL is currently using Mayoral money to fund a small renovation project at Clinton Hill. Doing what  Letitia James wants them to do would mean cancelling that project, and many like it borough wide, and pouring that money into Brooklyn Heights. BPL just can’t do that.

BPL receives two types of funding from the City Council. Usually each year they get 5M from the Brooklyn Delegation/Speaker's office that they use for projects borough wide. They then also receive additional funding from individual members. This is really where Brooklyn does worse than other boroughs.

Letitia James will say she has awarded millions in grants for BPL and take credit for the Delegation money. Beyond raising her hand in a meeting, she has done nothing to support the library.

Please note that the Brooklyn Heights building will not be sold unless there is a meaningful bid.

As for Ms. Hallen’s assertion the sale of the library is not being “rushed,” pushed through suddenly at the last minute, the library is even now being emptied of books and Ms. Hallen has herself acknowledges that the BPL made and kept secret its decision to sell the library from at least 2008 when it decided to evict the Business and Career Library until 2013 when it started moving forward fast to sign a contract before the end of Bloomberg's term.

That lack of transparency on BPL's part (even if Ms. Hallen asserts “BPL has gone out of their way to be as transparent as possible”) presents a problem in retroactively analyzing what City Council members who were kept in the dark should have done with respect to providing funds to libraries.  City Council members knew nothing about planned sales or how funds being provided to the BPL and NYPL were actually being used.

At the times in question, Ms. James was chair of Brooklyn delegation, and negotiated with the mayor for money for Clinton Hill, but she didn’t have the information the BPL was keeping secret and which she needed to be fully effective to have that delegation seek and procure funds.

Ms. Hallen is also, essentially, criticizing Ms. James for not having gotten sucked into a funding charade that Noticing New York has criticized in the past.  I wrote the following back in March:

What’s wrong with this picture is that none of it should be going on the first place and that in the end, despite the pleasing happy-ending show of heroism, it still leaves the libraries underfunded.  So underfunded, in fact, that now at the end of the Bloomberg era as part of an overall bigger end-of-term fire sale to the real estate industry* Bloomberg is getting ready to sell off libraries and shrink the system.

        (* Mid-town rezoning anyone?)

This is not what City Council or Borough President discretionary funds are for.  And if the City Council and Borough Presidents have the imagination for how those funds ought to be better used (and they indeed should) they ought to be screaming their heads off about the intentional underfunding of libraries, not content that "saving libraries" is an easy way to use the funds while looking as if they are riding to the rescue on a white horse.

See: Thursday, March 7, 2013, Tossing Dwarfs?: It’s Time To Demand That We Change The Way We Fund Libraries . . End The False Political Theater.

Here are some factors that complicate maters greatly when City Council members (or even the donating public) attempt to send money to the libraries in the midst of this charade:

    •    Not all City Council members have equal access to discretionary funds.  Speaker Christine Quinn was less generous in giving Tish James discretionary funds than others because the speaker has used the handouts of those funds for the purposes of reward and punishment, and Tish James stood up to Speaker Quinn more than most City Council members.
    •    As noted, until late January of this year nobody outside the Bloomberg administration and the BPL knew that those people would be selling off libraries using the lack of funds as an excuse- The plans to sell libraries go back at least to 2008, but were kept secret since that time.  Therefore, no council member could perceive urgency or could have put money into a library about to be under threat on condition that it not be sold.
    •    Discretionary funds coming from City Council members and Borough Presidents have been met with off-setting reductions on the other side from the Bloomberg administration, negating their effect.
    •    Funds provided to libraries have been used to pay for moving forward the real estate deals to sell libraries.
    •    Funds provided to libraries in very recent years have also been wasted as library assets paid for with them are sold off.  For example, within the time window roughly approximate to what Ms. Hallen is talking about, taxpayers paid $50 million for SIBL, the Science, Industry and Business Library, only to see it sold off for an apparent substantial loss, and in 2007 the Donnell Library renovated with a substantial amount of taxpayer funds was sold off at a fraction of its value to the public.
    •    City Council members who redirect their scarce discretionary funds into this library money pit can’t use those funds for other competing needs.

Under these circumstances, could and should a Council member have directed her concilmatic discretionary funds to libraries?  How would you know except in hindsight and with greater transparency than we have now.

What was James doing?  Here is a report in the Clinton Hill Blog about how James was fighting for restoration of library funds and library hours back on March 31, 2009: Our Local Reps React to the Proposed Budget Cuts.

Squadron Balks When Asked to Speak About His New Library Press Release

As Mr. Squadron wound up his campaign kickoff press conference I asked him to speak for the record about his position on libraries per his press release being handed out at that time.  He declined, dodging the opportunity, and the result is here on video on Citizens Defending Libraries YouTube Channel:



Squadron Campaign Kickoff: Equivocation on Libraries? 

It is not as if people haven’t been after Squadron for the longest time on these issues.  It’s just that the responses have been inadequate.  Here is an open letter from “long time Brooklyn Heights resident and preservationist Martin L. Schneider” to Mr. Squadron on the subject that appeared in the Brooklyn Heights Blog March 28, 2013: Preservationist to Squadron: BPL Is Prepared To Sellout For A Mess Of Pottage. 

Similarly, Citizens Defending Libraries members were constantly reaching out to Mr. Squadron.

More Support For Squadron Coupled With Support For Sale Of Brooklyn Heights Library On Brooklyn Heights Blog

The Brooklyn Heights Blog put up the Citizens Defending Libraries Squadron video in a post and you get the feeling that, when they did so, they may have been intending some damage control for Squadron.  Unfortunately for everyone, what might have been intended as damage control extended to an apparent argument (a“forward thinking” one) for selling the Brooklyn Heights Library based on slurring those who patronize it:

So, is it so strange for us to be more focused on that sort of forward thinking than to fight for a building with broken air conditioning, nannies on cell phones, homeless men fighting and creeps surfing for porn?

Noticing New York previously wrote about how some see selling the Heights library as a welcome opportunity to evict those they see as not belonging in the Brooklyn Heights community: Tuesday, May 14, 2013, A Consideration of Race, Equality, Opportunity and Democracy As NYC Libraries Are Sold And The Library System Shrunk And Deliberately Underfunded.

Most of the comments posted on the Brooklyn Heights Blog post were against any sale of the library but two commenters chimed with quotes (that can be added to the collection in my previous article) to the effect that those using the library were undesirables. 

“Lady in the Heights” who announced she was “voting for Squadron” and seemed intent on the idea that books can be replaced with Kindles said:

I used to spend time in the library until it was overrun with nannies IGNORING their charges. The children's room is appalling.

“HenryLoL,” reacting negatively to the support for keeping the library said:

Give it a rest already. Most of us here cant wait for that dump to be blown up. In its place will be nice housing and a new library. Cadman Plaza West and the hood in total will be better for it.

“HenryLoL” who seems to like selling off public assets to benefit developers at the expense of the public, similarly doesn’t like hospitals and wants to get rid of Long Island College Hospital (LICH) at the other end of Brooklyn Heights.  On another blog post he said about LICH:

Close this dump down! The City has NO RIGHT to tell this organization what to do. We have more hospitals in a few square miles than most cities have in 100. Getting to the point of ABSURD! And it is all because of unions!

(There are those involved in the fight to save LICH who think Squadron is doing the barest minimum in that regard- That's something else that’s relevant to running for Public Advocate.)

Here is my own comment to the post taking the issue with the implicit sympathy given Mr. Squadron by calling my requesting him for a statement “an ambush”:

“Ambush” connotes surprise. As for surprise: Citizens Defending Libraries was surprised that one half hour before his kickoff press conference Daniel Squadron issued a press release changing his position on the sell-off of New York City libraries, the Brooklyn Heights Library among them. I would say we were surprised and pleasantly gratified to have had an effect.

As for Mr. Squadron being surprised by us: Normally, when you issue a press release in connection with a press conference with your campaign staff handing out stacks of those releases at the conference, you expect to be asked about that statement you have released. Too bad Mr. Squadron did not use the opportunity to speak to NY1 about libraries and their sell-off if he truly wants the public to know his position.

If “ambush” means that the ambusher springs out from hiding; no one was hiding- We were standing in plain sight of Mr. Squadron with our protect-the-libraries signs for well over a half hour before we approached Mr. Squadron to ask him to speak about his written statement. Some would infer from the issuance of the Squadron library position statement a half hour before his kickoff (plus the fact that they emailed it to us at that time) that Squadron and his campaign managers were expecting Citizens Defending Libraries long before we ever showed up.

Well before the press conference started I spoke with one of Mr. Squadron’s campaign managers saying that we were hoping to get an oral statement that morning from Mr. Squadron based on his new release and I even used the contact phone number his campaign provided to initiate this conversation, meeting at the press conference site with his designated representative.

I politely waited to speak to Mr. Squadron until he had completed all other business and was not distracted by other matters.

Where the Brooklyn Heights Blog switches into “Point of View” it raises some interesting topics about libraries that are worth discussing. I think you will find that those topics are covered by the questions that Citizens Defending Libraries presented to Mr. Squadron in the form of a questionnaire and in connection with its Candidates Forum on libraries, questions about his position on libraries to which Mr. Squadron has not yet responded. I think you will find that those topics are amply discussed and debated by others on Citizens Defending Libraries web pages.

As for referring to the air conditioning at the Brooklyn Heights Library as “broken,” the better adjective would be “unfixed,” given the very strange documentation provided by the BPL attempting to explain what went wrong with the library’s air conditioning AFTER its decision to push this library onto the chopping block for real estate developer benefit. (cf: The Donnell Library.)

From using and canvassing the Brooklyn Heights Library I know that it is intensely used by a broad swath of society, including families such as our own that are definitely at the high end of the socioeconomic spectrum. I think it is unfortunate that in arguing for the sale and shrinkage of the library you offer a `profiling’ and, I think, false caricature of people using the library whose resources are not equal to ours. Sadly, you are not the first to suggest that selling the library would evict what you are portraying as a different and undesirable population. (Note that our last forum was co-sponsored by the NAACP.)

I am glad that Mr. Squadron’s press statement is now up on the web. When I last checked I had to inform his campaign people that it wasn’t.

A Matter of Proper Tone?

When Citizens Defending Libraries first met with Mr. Squadron as a state senator representing us to ask him to oppose the sale of the Brooklyn Heights Library he used it as an opportunity to admonish us that he considered that Citizens Defending Libraries was using an inappropriate “tone” when it was decrying the sale, shrinkage and deliberate underfunding of the New York City’s libraries for the sake of creating real estate deals that benefit developers, not the public.

What is an appropriate tone when Citizens Defending Libraries challenges a sell-off of public assets that is not for the public good?  Or the proper tone when the Public Advocate does its job by opposing such sell-offs?

An example of what Mr. Squadron meant by inappropriate tone?   He thought the cartoon (below) created by Mark Hurwitt was out of bounds.

From the pen of Mark Hurwitt: BPL officials say they want to sign a contract with a developer for the sale of the Brooklyn Heights Library before the end of Bloomberg's term.  The NYPL also plans to demolish the research stacks of the 42nd Street on a similar time frame- On Bloomberg's own site, something he says he wants to accomplish (along with his Mid-town Rezoning!

What about the similarly critical works of illustrator Simon Verity like the one below?

From the pen of Simon Verity: Is Bruce Ratner going to get the Brooklyn Heights Library?  Maybe.

Mr. Verity’s works illustrate the cover story in The Nation this month about the NYPL’s sell-offs of city libraries.

The Nation's current cover story by Scott Sherman reports on early (June of 2007) communications with the Bloomberg administration to sell off NYC libraries

Inside it is illustrated with drawings by Simon Verity like: "Not much of a civilization, they destroyed the library," and. . .

. . . Playing of the name of NYPL president Anthony W. Marx. . .

Giving Mr. Squadron the Last Word

The end of an article is considered a place of honor and, usually, it is considered that whoever gets the last word is favored by getting to top off the argument.  I’ll give Mr. Squadron the last word.  The following is his short press release statement on libraries.  It is just that without more that we have asked him for, including responses to questions presented by Citizens Defending Libraries, and, more important, actions, it is difficult to know what it really means.  In other words we are still waiting for Mr. Squadron’s last words:    

For Immediate Release: September 12, 2013 [Later corrected to the 15th, this incorrect date- the date of Deborah Hallen's morning voice message- is likely when it was first drafted]
Contact: Amy Spitalnick, 516-521-0128

        Statement from Daniel Squadron about New York City Libraries

I am opposed to the proposed plans by the city's library systems in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

As always, I believe that meaningful community input is absolutely necessary; when it comes to these proposed plans, transparency and responsiveness have been insufficient.

I also believe that it is simply unacceptable to sell or shrink libraries for profit.

And I am deeply opposed to cuts to library funding, which put our libraries in crisis.

I've been proud to work on these issues in the State Senate, receiving an 'A' from New Yorkers for Better Libraries on my voting record last year.

I continue to be focused on protecting funding and finding solutions that ensure strong, healthy libraries across the five boroughs.

Physical copy of press lease on new library position that Squadron was handing out at kickoff press conference

Michael Kimmelman, architectural critic for the New York Times, has a new piece on libraries in today’s paper.  I think it somewhat pulls off his apparent purpose in the end, but it is a nerve-wracking read, embarking on a dangerous undertaking.  He is writing about the “out-of-the-box” (gag me with a spoon) idea of using New York City libraries as “cooling centers,”  “cooling stations” and hurricane/emergency relief centers.  As everyone knows, this old PR meme is something library administration officials have been pushing to confuse the library real estate sell-off debate going on back at least to the announcement of many of those library sales at very beginning of this year, with library sell-off advocates like City Councilman Brad Lander carrying their water on this PR topic with smug, prearranged `cleverness.’

What’s wrong with this kernel of a good idea?  Everyone knows that going back to the sudden secretive sale of the Donnell Library there hasn’t been a library that library administration officials haven’t wanted to sell or destroy (including the stacks of the 42nd Street Central Reference Library) where they don’t blame theoretically problematic air conditioning.  They argue that the air conditioning can’t be fixed, but must be fixed, so they say that the ownership of the real estate must be turned over to developers.  Witness the current shenanigans respecting the intentional overestimation of air conditioning repair costs and refusal to repair the air conditioning with respect to the Brooklyn Heights Library.  The air conditioning `broke down'just months before Brooklyn Public Library officials were about to make public their longstanding (going back to 2008) secret plans to sell that library.

In the end, Kimmelman pulls out of what might have been a nosedive all the way to the very bottom of the NYPL’s PR maw with the following:

Disasters aside, branch libraries are a safe and equitable bet on our social and economic health. Trustees at the always tin-cup-wielding New York Public Library are now pondering a $300 million renovation scheme for its 42nd Street landmark. (Bill de Blasio, the Democratic candidate for mayor, told me recently that if elected, he would take a second look at the Bloomberg administration’s promise of $150 million in taxpayer money toward that renovation.)

In other words, library administration officials promoting these real estate deals are spending public taxpayer money, at least $150 million of it, very foolishly.

Yes, in the end, it’s a reasonably good idea to think in terms of using libraries, or at least some of them, for some disaster-relief functions, even if it is a distracting idea, but . . .  disaster relief obviously isn’t, and shouldn’t be, the primary purpose of libraries.  

Here’s a link to the Kimmelman’s story: Critic’s Notebook, Next Time, Libraries Could Be Our Shelters From the Storm.  More important, here is Kimmelman’s original famous critique of that "Central Library Plan" (CLP), now for PR purposes being rechristened "The 42nd Street Library Renovation Plan" (Said NYPL COO David Offensend on September 25th, the day the new name was launched at the NYPL's Trustees meeting- "It's the same plan"): Critic’s Notebook- In Renderings for a Library Landmark, Stacks of Questions, by Michael Kimmelman, January 29, 2013.

While deciding that libraries can double as disaster centers could allow for some sensible efficiencies in facing certain scale disasters, the idea could also be criticized as being a piece with the across-the board, general and extreme reductions of social services and government functions and their sometimes transfer to private ownership or to other, less well-equipped branches of the government.  Like Republican calls for elimination of FEMA, these are notions the 1% are too quick to promote.  Everyone remembers Grover Norquist's expression of his fondest wish:  to get the government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

In that regard, just as the primary purpose of a library should, first and foremost, be to be a library, we should also be thinking in terms of our disaster relief centers truly being what they ought to be.

Library and city officials wanting to sell off library real estate have ventured into the realm of laughability as they busily make arguments that libraries can be much, much smaller if the use of library space can be conceived of as being infinitely flexible.  See:  Thursday, April 25, 2013, Building a “Murphy Library.”

Murphy Bed to Murphy Library?

We want to shrink libraries down by having them be ever more flexible, but then, on top of that, these shrunken libraries should now take on still another additional function, that of disaster relief?

How does the idea that libraries will be our havens in a storm work if we are at the same time selling off our significant library spaces, selling Donnell, selling Mid-Manhattan, selling the Science, Industry and Business Library (SIBL), selling the Brooklyn Heights Library (which was designed with a bomb shelter intending that it have a disaster relief function to capitalize on)?  How will the many Manhattanites be accommodated for relief in a disaster when the NYPL's Central Library Plan takes more than 380,000 square feet of library space and reduces it to a mere 80,000 square feet in the back of the Central Research Library 42nd Street building accessible through just one small door?

To conclude on the topic of how library air conditioning is being used as a routine excuse to sell libraries: This past Monday there was a City Council hearing on the subject of selling New York City's libraries.  It was chaired by City Council member Jimmy Van Bramer from Queens who favors the proposed sale of New York City's libraries, thus putting him in disagreement with Citizens Defending Libraries and its petition calling for a halt to these sales. Citizens Defending Libraries delivered much testimony at that hearing which will all soon be up on line.  Here is a piece of Citizens Defending Libraries testimony that dealt with air conditioning as an excuse to sell libraries to developers.   

September 30, 2013

James G. Van Bramer, Chair
Committee on Cultural Affairs,
   Libraries and International Intergroup Relations
250 Broadway, Committee Rm 16th Fl
New York, NY 10017

Re:    Agency Oversight Hearings on capital construction needs and the potential disposal of libraries in New York City

Dear Committee:

We are here to say yet again we need a “cooling off” period. . .
                                           
. . .  We need a moratorium on the selling off of the library system’s best and most valuable assets until more is known about the questionable reasons being given for why the best real estate needs to be sold off to developers.

We need a“cooling off” period because every time they want to sell libraries, often recently renovated ones, they seem to find an insurmountable problem with the library’s air conditioning system.  It’s highly suspicious!

Whenever library officials want to push a library out the door as a real estate deal they find air conditioning problems a handy complaint.

    •    The reason Donnell Library needed to be closed, sold and shrunk?  An air conditioning problem!  To sell a whole library?  At a considerable loss to the public because the NYPL netted less than $39 million for the 97,000 square foot library?  By way of reference, much of that library had been recently renovated, the auditorium, the Teen Center, and in November of 2001 a new 14,500 sq ft state-of-the-art media center paid for by the City and State of New York.  That complete and extensive renovation included new air conditioning for about 15% of Donnell’s space. It cost $1 million.  While that much of the building had been so recently renovated for so little (and other recent renovations of more space were in place) the NYPL provided cover for the announcement its announcement of Donnell’s sale in 2007 estimating that renovation of the rest of the building would cost $48 million!  

    •    Why demolish the historic research book stack system at the Tilden Astor Central Reference Library at 42nd Street?   According to the NYPL. . . An air conditioning problem!

    •    Need to sell off and shrink the Brooklyn Heights branch and Business and Career library?   According to the BPL . . . .An air conditioning problem!

    •    Sell the historic Pacific Branch? An air conditioning problem!  Want to sell off a lot of libraries in Brooklyn?  Announce that a lot of them have air conditioning problems and start closing them in the summer!     See: More libraries fall as heat nears 100 degrees, By Mary Frost, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 6, 2012.

Highly suspicious.  We need an audit!

The Brooklyn Public Library announced that it wanted to sell the Brooklyn Heights Library because of the condition of the air conditioning this January but the plan and decision to sell the library go back to at least 2008.  The air conditioning breakdown that `couldn’t be fixed’ didn’t occur until summer, 2012, right in time to announce the library’s sale to the public.

Although the public was told that the air conditioning was the reason to sell the library in January of 2013, library administration and city officials withheld information about exactly what was supposedly wrong with the air conditioning until mid-June, days before an RFP (Request For Proposals) to sell the library (because of the “air conditioning”!) was sent out.  The withheld information finally released was simply a July 12, 2012 DDC Construction Report but even then the requested cost estimates that had been cited in the press all along were still withheld.  When these documents were requested from the Brooklyn Public Library they referred our representatives over to DDC (New York City Department of Design and Construction) and when the DDC was requested to give up these documents they referred our representatives back over to the BPL.  To date they haven’t been produced.

In substitution therefor the BPL has produced another in a series of escalating estimates of the cost of repairing the air conditioning.  A repair that was once estimated to cost $700,000 or substantially less went to $750,000 and from there to $3 million, then to $3.5 million.  The official estimate has now recently escalated to between $4.5 and $5 million (and is apparently at odds with previous engineering assessments).  You know that they are reaching to find costs because both the architect delivering the estimate and Brooklyn Public Library spokesperson are saying that one of the hard-to-meet challenges in fixing the system is all the heat that modern-day computers are throwing off.  These modern-day computers are also being blamed by the BPL for making the library too expensive to repair in another way: It would be far too expensive to supply them with the electricity they need!

Further, the most recent estimate, disingenuous on its face, calls for fixing air conditioning that isn’t broken and for air conditioning more space than actually required. 
              
We need an audit and we need a “cooling off” period until that audit is completed and the mind-set of library and city officials is no longer one that prioritizes creating real estate deals for developers!  Remember: These breakdowns accompanied by inflated repair estimates only came after the decision to the sell the library.


                            Sincerely,


                            Citizens Defending Libraries

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo looked pretty good when, at the very beginning of July this past summer, he created a special 25 member panel Moreland Commission to investigate corruption and misconduct of public officials in our state capital of Albany and, in relation thereto, to recommend changes to the state’s election and campaign fund-raising laws.

He looked good, though sometimes what is most important for you to know about government is not what’s being done, but what is not being done: It has recently been reported that the governor is restraining the commission he created from issuing subpoenas to investigate exactly what the commission was created to investigate.  Cuomo’s administration has reportedly intervened to quash follow-the-money subpoenas that were hitting too close to home for Cuomo, including a subpoena that was to have been sent out to REBNY, the powerful Real Estate Board of New York, concerning highly lucrative tax cuts bestowed upon five  developers with the secretive passage of a highly suspect legislative provision.

The New York Times story about Cuomo’s creation of the Moreland Commission is here: Cuomo Creates Special Commission to Investigate Corrupt Elected Officials, by Thomas Kaplan, July 2, 2013.  The more recent story appearing there months later about Cuomo’s restraint of that commission is here: Cuomo’s Office Is Said to Rein In Ethics Board He Created, by Jesse McKinley and Thomas Kaplan, October 8, 2013

Cuomo needed to look good and to distinguish himself from the rest of Albany when he appointed the corruption investigation commission in July.  Everywhere you looked there was more Albany scandal and nobody knew what was coming next.  In April, announcing two different prosecutions of capital legislators the same week U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said the investigation pointed to rampant corruption in New York’s capital and as reported by WNYC’s  Anna Sale he “specifically called out other lawmakers, without naming names, for standing silent while it went on” warning “that the Feds are watching.”  (See: WNYC News: Another Political Scandal Ensnares New York Politicians, Thursday, April 04, 2013, by Anna Sale.)

The two scandals of that week were the announcement of the federal case against State Senator Malcolm Smith and Councilman Dan Halloran and then the bringing of federal charges against Bronx Assemblyman Eric Stevenson alleged to have accepted cash bribes to help businessmen set up an adult day care center in the Bronx.  The second investigation of Stevenson involved a fellow Bronx Assemblyman Nelson Castro wearing a wire to serve as an informant in the case and, thereby, in a deal with the prosecutors, avoid other possible charges against himself.  Castro's cooperation with law enforcement officials began in 2009 after he was indicted by a Bronx grand jury for multiple felonies.  The case against Malcolm Smith and Dan Halloran in connection with which four others were arrested , including two Republican party officials and the mayor of Spring Valley, N.Y., involved Smith trying to bribe himself onto the Republican ballot for New York City Mayor and charges against the mayor of Spring Valley, N.Y., a village in Rockland County, and her deputy, accused of taking bribes to sell village land for a proposed community center.

As shocking as it was that Assemblyman Nelson Castro has served in the legislature for years while wearing a wire, one month after that revelation news was announced that another serving Albany legislator, Shirley Huntley, serving as state senator until November 2012 when she lost her bid for reelection, had been wearing a wire to record legislative comrades (seven others) at the same time.  She wore a wire in the summer of 2012 after being confronted with evidence of her own wrongdoing, “evidence of crimes that included embezzling $87,700 from her Queens nonprofit.”  (See- WNYC News: Another Legislator Served While Wearing a Wire, New Court Docs Show,  Friday, May 03, 2013, by Anna Sale)

The New York Times story reporting Cuomo’s establishment of the Moreland Commission (“two weeks after the Legislature concluded its annual session without approving any new measures to address the recent corruption scandals”) included all sorts of assurances about its reach, including this quote from the governor at the news conference held in Albany:  

The people of this state should sleep better tonight knowing that there is a mechanism in place to make sure their government is not only competent, but is also meeting the highest ethical and legal standards.

The article noted that, while the Moreland Act under which the commission was created itself only allowed scrutiny of Mr. Cuomo’s executive branch, Cuomo was working with State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman deputizing and empowering members of the panel as deputy attorneys general, so that according to Mr. Schneiderman:

There’s no substantial legal argument against them looking into every aspect of the state government. . . Their jurisdiction is as broad as we can grant using the full authority of my office and of the governor’s office.

According to the Times, William J. Fitzpatrick, the Onondaga County district attorney, one of three appointed leaders of the panel, “suggested the panel would not shy away from scrutinizing the governor’s fund-raising,” saying:

He’s not looking for rubber stamps . . .He’s looking for an independent commission, and we’ll do what Deep Throat told Bob Woodward to do: follow the money.

That was significant in that U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara has been communicating to the media that “a show-me-the-money culture seems to pervade every level of New York government,” and, as the Times made clear, “Mr. Cuomo is a prolific fund-raiser, with more than $22 million in his campaign account as of January.”  The flow of money to public officials in Albany is important in two respects: Campaign contributions flowing to those running for office, and because Albany legislators who officially work part-time take in significant other income.  The New York Times editorializing in September about the work in store for the Moreland Commission noted that 115 of the state’s 212 legislators earn income on the side that can be secret.  (See: Editorial- New York Legislators’ Secret Income, by The Editorial Board, September 23, 2013.)

The Daily News also had its own follow-the-money ideas about what should be investigated.  Not many days before Cuomo created the new commission the Daily News had reported with outrage that five luxury developments in Manhattan were singled out for “tax breaks — which could cost the city tens of millions of dollars in property taxes” flowing from “language quietly inserted into a bill that sailed through the state Legislature.”   The exemption from local real estate taxes was not part of any broadly administered or thought out local program or the subject of an economic benefit analysis.  On the contrary, the secretly slipped in exemption overrode what local officials analyzed would e best for the city in terms of collecting taxes, but in the Daily News article Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, said the tax breaks were deserved, and:

Whenever anybody doesn’t like something, they make an argument that some quid pro quo was made. I totally reject the suggestion.

(See: NY lawmakers mandate massive tax breaks for millionaires’ Manhattan apartments
Language quietly inserted into a bill that sailed through the state Legislature singled out five NYC developments to make them eligible for tax breaks that could cost the city tens of millions of dollars in property taxes, the Daily News has learned. Developers of four of the projects, their relatives and affiliated companies gave $1.5 million to various state campaign committees from 2008 to 2012. by Daniel Beekman, Monday, June 17, 2013.   See also: NYC politicians blast ‘galling’ Albany tax deal for luxury apartment towers- Officials seethed a day after the Daily News reported that five upscale developments were given property tax breaks by state lawmakers. 'Extending tax breaks to super-luxury apartment buildings in Manhattan is wrongheaded and shows grossly misplaced priorities,' City Controller John Liu said. By Erin Durkin AND Daniel Beekman Tuesday, June 18, 2013.)

Days later the Daily News editorialized that the“tens of millions of dollars” tax breaks“Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer” were subsidizing were a “monument to fleecing,” pointing out that the “Bloomberg administration concluded years ago that the abatements [the developers seized with secret legislation] were far too generous and demanded too little affordable housing.”   (See: Opinion- A towering insult-  Why should taxpayers subsidize luxury condos for billionaires? New York Daily News, June 24, 2013.)
In August, the Daily News followed up with another editorial calling for the Moreland Commission empowered by Cuomo and the Attorney General to get to the bottom of what had happened when the millions of dollars of tax breaks were granted.   (See: Opinion- From out of the murk- Cuomo’s Moreland Act panel has to unravel the mystery of the luxury tax breaks, New York Daily News, Wednesday, August 21, 2013.)

The editorial observed:

Responding to the Daily News revelation that the law cut taxes on a W. 57th Street residential tower marketed to billionaires, Gov. Cuomo’s anti-corruption commission issued subpoenas to the builder, as well as to the real-estate interests behind the other four projects. News Albany Bureau Chief Ken Lovett got a jump on that inquiry with word that Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s office was a pivotal player in the deal.

The Real Estate Board of New York, the industry lobbying group, has now provided additional information about a months-long series of events far from public view, in keeping with the Legislature’s practice of doing virtually everything in closed-door discussions.

The News notes that who slipped the provision into the bill isn’t known:

Then someone — no one has owned up — drafted language that inserted the properties into a massive bill that encompassed all the housing programs.

And noted that elected officials, including Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Republican Leader Dean Skelos, are not being “forthcoming.”  The caption to the picture for the editorial, a picture of Silver and Skelos is: “Silver or Skelos? Who put the high-rise tax break into the bill?”  Who could say?  REBNY could almost certainly say, which is something the editorial hints at.

The Daily News editorial concludes:“every participant must be brought to light by Cuomo’s Moreland Act commission.”

In its own editorial about the secret legislator income that it thinks the Moreland Commission should be investigating The New York Times informed us:

The Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, made up to $920,000 for his work with a law firm and his investments; the Senate Republican leader, Dean Skelos, earned as much as $263,000 in legal work, investments and deferred compensation.

(Editorial: New York Legislators’ Secret Income, by The Editorial Board, September 23, 2013.)

At just about the same time as the Daily News was calling for a deeper investigation of the granting of these multimillion dollar tax breaks to connected real estate developers, another story was breaking with respect to what activities were being investigated by the Moreland Commission that touched upon Speaker Silver’s relationships:  Political fund-raiser William E. Rapfogel, who ran the influential Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, was abruptly fired from his position after an internal investigation concurrent with investigations of the commission pertaining to “financial irregularities and apparent misconduct” in the attempted steering of political donations “kickbacks” from insurance companies.  Mr. Rapfogel’s wife Judy “is the longtime chief of staff to the State Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver.”  (See: Power Broker, Fired, Faces Inquiry on Political Donations, by David W. Chen and Kate Taylor, August 12, 2013.)

Norman Order has pointed our repeatedly in Atlantic Yards Report articles that the Rapfogel investigation could, in multiple possible ways, lead into connections with Forest City Ratner and its Atlantic Yards mega-project.  Among other things, Mr. Oder has noted that one of the sons of Mr. Rapfogel and his wife, Michael Rapfogel, is the “Forest City VP of External Affairs who's the developer's chief legislative liaison.”  (See: Tuesday, August 13, 2013, The surprise firing of power broker William Rapfogel: four Forest City Ratner angles, including Barclays Center charity event and campaign support for Tish James challenger, Monday, September 16, 2013, Times digs into investigation of the Met Council's Rapfogel; will it touch Silver and/or Forest City?, Wednesday, September 25, 2013, Met Council's Rapfogel said to have kept $1 million out of $5 million stolen; gave $100,000 to help a son buy home, and Wednesday, August 14, 2013, Why can't candidates return funds from developers receiving subpoenas, as Albanese suggests? Also, why campaign contributions suggest de Blasio will go light on Atlantic Yards .)

It would be nice if, as the Daily News urged “every participant” in the granting of the tax cuts could be brought to light.  To this end the commission had drafted a subpoena to go to REBNY, along with other subpoenas, all of which could have shed light on these matters and, unfortunately, the Cuomo administration reportedly intervened to quash them before they were ever issued.

Last week Ken Lovett, Albany bureau chief for The Daily News, appeared on the Brian Lehrer show to talk about what Cuomo apparently doesn’t want the Moreland Commsion looking into: The Brian Lehrer Show- Anti-Corruption Commission Update, Thursday, October 10, 2013



Cuomo reportedly exercised influence to ensure that three commission subpoenas that were “set to go out” did not.  The subpoenas were to go to:

    1.    Ethics Commission and the Legislative Ethics Commission- (This subpoena employed the smart strategy of looking for prior complaints against legislators as pointers to what needs to be looked into). 
    2.    REBNY- Tax breaks for five developers- Same five developers gave a lot of money to Cuomo when he was signing the bill.
    3.    State Democratic party controlled by Cuomo.

Mr. Lovett explained that (as noted previously above) some of the very first subpoenas the commission has sent out were to the five developers who had received the lucrative tax breaks secretly snuck into the housing bill.  The REBNY subpoena would have followed up, but Mr Lovett explained that:   

We found out that those same five developers gave a lot of money to Governor Cuomo, particularly around the time the was signing the bill.  That raised questions.  REBNY was all part of that. REBNY was also very close to the Independence Party which was also getting subpoenaed for its relationship with the state senate Republicans.  So REBNY. . . There was a lot of interest from both those angles, and that subpena ended up not going out.

Mr. Lovett said that despite official denials and acknowledgment of frequent contact with the Governor’s Office and Attorney General’s Office,“sources close to the situation say . . .they were specifically told [by the Governor’s Office] not to send the subpoena to RBNY, not to send subpoenas to the Legislative Ethics Commission and the State Ethics Commission.”

It’s worth listening to Mr. Lovett’s interview with Lehrer which gets into many more details. It’s more informative and nuanced than his fairly short Daily News articles.  See below:  Cuomo's anti-corruption panel stops at investigating his own Democratic party- A subpoena that sought to seek information on the New York Democratic party’s spending from its ‘housekeeping’ account was never sent, sources tell the Daily News.  Thursday, October 3, 2013,  Gov. Cuomo leans on ‘independent’ corruption panel, Team Cuomo now has final say over some subpoenas and other actions, according to multiple sources.  Monday, September 30, 2013,  Cuomo doing damage-control over anti-corruption commission — gets no favors from GOP-  Cuomo may want to reignite talks with the Legislature on ethics reform, but Senate Republicans are letting him know, says an insider, ‘We may very well do it, but we’re not doing it on your time frame.' Monday, October 14, 2013.

In the Lehrer interview Mr. Lovett makes the point that the value of the commission’s work goes beyond investigating what is illegal, because as Mr. Lovett puts it: “Some of the worst stuff is considered legal right now.”

In an August 5, 2013 press release concerning the work of the commission Common Cause addressed itself to the money flow from the real estate industry that is, but shouldn’t be legal: "Moreland Monday" Analysis of REBNY Contributions Raises Serious Issues for Commission to Consider.

Before it concludes, the press release addresses itself to the technical LLC (Limited Liabiluity Corporation) loophole that allows real estate companies to give virtually unlimited money to political campaigns while concealing the money's source.  And it quotes Susan Lerner, Executive Director of Common Cause/NY, pointing out how vast a vast flow of real estate money to upstate legislators then governs what becomes law in New York City:

Our analysis shows a skillful and calculated manipulation of all of the weaknesses in New York State's campaign finance laws by New York City's real estate industry, which uses every trick in the book to insure that the investment they make in plentiful campaign contributions garners an extraordinarily large return at the expense of New York City's tenants and taxpayers. . .  Legislators from outside New York City are thus encouraged to pass laws which burden New York City residents and have no impact on their own constituents but serve to maximize the campaign contributions they receive. We urge the Moreland Commission to use the full scope of their investigatory powers to fully examine this situation and recommend policies to end this exploitation.

The press release starts out as follows:

A new "Moreland Monday" analysis released today by Common Cause/NY is raising serious questions about the potential influence of tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions on public policy relating to real estate and development in New York City. Since 2005, REBNY (Real Estate Board of NY) and the 37 companies comprising its leadership have contributed $43.9 million to state and local candidates, committees, and PACs. REBNY's contributions have increased in recent election cycles, with $17.1 million given since 2011 alone.

The Fair Elections for New York campaign is calling on the newly created Moreland Commission to subpoena all relevant information related to contributions as part of their sweeping investigation of corruption in New York State.

Common Cause/NY's analysis reveals that the State Senate is the top target of REBNY money and that the overwhelming majority flows to lawmakers who represent districts outside of New York City: Since 2011, REBNY and its leadership have given $3.2 million to candidates and committees in the State Senate. Over 73% of contributions to candidates went to districts outside of New York City. Similarly, over $2.4 million (75%) went to Senate Republicans. By comparison, Senate Democrats received $500,000 while the four-member Independent Democratic Conference received $308,000.

Noticing New York has always focused on development in New York City and its none-too-pleasant associated politics.  For so long as the world of New York development continues to be a baffling construct of complicated and arcane subsidies conjoined with discretionary public official approvals having significant financial ramifications, that world is going to be awash in the vast expenditures of political money it will attract.  It exacerbates problems tremendously that the flow of such money even when accompanied by fairly explicit quid-pro-quos is almost completely unregulated, uninvestigated and virtually legal.  Likely, it is a vicious cycle with the impossibility of regulating political money generating more complex obscurity in the world of real estate and vice versa.

In the end, it means is that, because organizations like REBNY are not looking out for the greater good, the city is diminished with each tax break, each subsidy, each zoning change, each variance that is improperly sold off to behind-the-scenes manipulators.  Why?  Because those are the things our public officials control and therefore have available to sell.  Unfortunately, the impoverishment of the public realm goes beyond even this: Our public officials are also officially entrusted with the assets that the public owns, and so in this world where money spent behind the scenes holds too much sway we see that our public officials are willing to sell off such public assets to the real estate industry as well: Our parks, our hospitals, our libraries, our NYCHA public housing playgrounds, our schools, our streets, avenues and sidewalks, our highways.  Nor does it even stop there: With eminent domain our public officials believe they are entitled to sell off the private property of citizens, and do.

Perhaps organizations like REBNY ought to perceive that a diminished city impoverishes us all, including, collectively, every property owner and developer within that city they represent.  Perhaps these organizations ought also to perceive that the cultural corruption of what is going on, whether or not it is exactly legal, similarly impoverishes us all.  They don’t apparently understand this..

Governor Cuomo didn’t invent the corruption in Albany.  There are those who might argue that he feels trapped by it, even as he knowledgeably uses and navigates through it it to get results.  His eye is discernibly on higher office.  In contrast to what is happening nationwide, he wants to hold up New York as an example of a state where Democrats and Republicans can work together.  Well, one example of such across-the-aisle cooperation is that it is expected that members of both parties, Democrat and Republican, would both be mightily riled if Cuomo more aggressively pursued reforms that would turn off the corrupting money spigot. . . .

. .   Nevertheless, it is disheartening to find our New York governor quashing the REBNY and other subpoenas, largely abandoning the purpose of the recently appointed Moreland Commission.  On the Brian Lehrer program there was talk of rumors that the commission might be shut down prematurely, its work largely undone, and that the governor would seek to kick the political can way down the road by proposing a constitutional amendment to be passed by the electorate.

At the same time we are reading about Governor Cuomo’s effective abandonment of the Moreland Commssion’s mission we are reading that on the other side of the river, in New Jersey, another governor with national political aspirations, Governor Christie, intervened to quash an unwanted investigation of supporters close to him:  The Quashing of a Case Against a Christie Ally, by Michael Powell, October 10, 2013.

New Jersey may be lucky- That story reported by the Times involved local corruption in one small town: “The 43-count grand jury indictment read like a primer in small-town abuse of power.”

According to the Times:

When the charges became public, the indicted undersheriff, Michael Russo, shrugged it off. Governor Christie, he assured an aide, would “have this whole thing thrown out,” according to The Hunterdon County Democrat. That sounded like bluster. Then the state killed the case.

New Jersey, courtesy of its intervening governor, gets uninvestigated small town abuses of power.  In New York we get a real estate industry that’s out of control.

What the Times asks with the quote (from a sidelined prospector) it selects to end of the Christie/New Jersey article is just as applicable to Governor Cuomo quashing the investigation of the real estate industry’s corrupting influence on politics in New York:

I think about what happened all the time; it wasn’t subtle, . . . . In the end, it’s easy to get rid of a prosecutor. But it raises that question: In New Jersey [substitute New York], who watches the watchman?

Earlier this month, October 14th, I wrote here in Noticing New York:

sometimes what is most important for you to know about government is not what’s being done, but what is not being done

I was writing about reports that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was restraining the 25-member Moreland Commission he had created to investigate corruption and misconduct of Albany public officials from issuing subpoenas to investigate exactly what the commission was created to investigate.  See: Monday, October 14, 2013, Governor Andrew Cuomo Quashes Moreland Commission’s REBNY Subpoena and Other Follow-The-Money Subpoenas Hitting Too Close To Home.

Well, I am going to say it again: There is an update to the situation I reported on back then, but it is still true that sometimes what is most important for you to know about government is not what’s being done, but what is not being done.

At almost the exact same time I put up my Noticing New York analysis of the situation the New York Times ran a Michael Powell column similarly assessing the situation.  See: Gotham-Governor’s Crusade Against Corruption Comes With Too Many Asterisks, October 14, 2013.

Mr Powell observed how the representations that the commission would be the “the best, the grandest ever” and that “Anti-corruption, campaign finance, transparency and courage would be its watch words” came with too many undermining asterisk exceptions when tested against the reality being delivered.  Powell noted, as had Noticing New York, the Governor’s interference with the issuance of the following subpoenas:

    •    “the Real Estate Board of New York, which helped lobby for multimillion-dollar special tax abatements” apparently, “a rude step too far”

    •    “the state Democratic Party committee, which represents the politicians who control two and a half of the three wings of New York government.”  Mr. Powell observed that, by contrast, the investigation “will scrutinize accounts belonging to the Senate Republican campaign committee and Independence Party.”

In addition, Powell (not Noticing New York) noted the absence of a subpoena for:

    •     “the governor’s Committee to Save New York, the fund-raising vehicle by which the state’s larger corporate, real estate and gambling barons raised $17 million to express their adoration and support for Mr. Cuomo’s efforts to cut taxes and promote casino gambling. Purely by chance, this committee shut down its operations less than two months ago, which means there is no longer an organization to subpoena. `We felt our mission was accomplished,’ the committee’s director said.”

Noticing New York (but not Powell) noted the absence of a subpoenas for the:

    •    Ethics Commission and the Legislative Ethics Commission- (This subpoena employed the smart strategy of looking for prior complaints against legislators as pointers to what needs to be looked into).

A lot of good investigative reporting work pursuing the trail of the quashed subpoenas has been done by Ken Lovett, Albany bureau chief for The Daily News, a fact alluded to in Powell’s column.  The last Noticing New York article on this subject included a very good interview of Mr. Lovett by WNYC’s Brian Lehrer.  Even Mother Jones jumped onto reporting bandwagon.  See: Andrew Cuomo's Much-Touted Corruption Watchdog Is Beginning to Look Like a Joke, by Andy Kroll, Oct. 8, 2013.

In addition, (previously overlooked here) the New York Times editorial board weighed in the day before the excoriating Powell column: Editorial- Will New York’s Political Watchdog Pass the Test? By The Editorial Board, October 13, 2013.

All this reporting and focus may have gotten a reaction from the Governor.  The day after the Noticing New York and Powell pieces ran the Commission reconsidered and decided to move forward in issuing the subpoena for the State Democratic Party that Cuomo was previously reported to have suppressed, together with “subpoenas to some businesses that employ legislators.”   (See: Panel to Investigate State Democratic Party, by Thomas Kaplan, October 15, 2013.)

According to the Daily News:

The actions by the commission took place just hours after Attorney General Eric Schneiderman--who deputized the 25 members of the commission--told public radio that the panel should not be interfered with when asked about the Cuomo reports.

"To succeed, the commission has to be independent and has to follow the money wherever it goes," Schneiderman said.

(See:EXCLUSIVE: Anti-Corruption Commission Sending Subpoenas To Gov. Cuomo-Tied Entities- Gov. Cuomo’s anti-corruption commission has reversed itself and will now send subpoenas to the state Democratic party and other entities tied to the governor, the Daily News has learned, by Ken Lovett, October 15, 2013.)

All of this is well enough, but as I began by saying, what is likely most important to look at is what is not happening, and that is the subpoena to REBNY, the Real Estate Board of New York.    Said the New York Times in its October 13th editorial:

What’s distressing about this news is that the commissioners got off to a good start. They were investigating developers of high-end apartments to find out how lucrative tax breaks were mysteriously slipped into budget bills. Then, suddenly, the commission stalled.

The Times went on to worry that the commission’s Cuomo-induced omissions would:

destroy the confidence of an already wary public that anything meaningful can be done to curb the way money corrupts politics in Albany.  

The previous, more in depth, Noticing New York article noted speculations about where a REBNY subpoena would lead: very important places, including possibly to Assembly Speaker Sheldon and maybe Senate Republican Leader Dean Skelos, among others.  The multi-million dollar tax exemptions that were granted are a massive money trail.

The latest?  As of the beginning of this week Cuomo was dressing himself up as a hero with respect to the subpoenas the commission has issued, predicting they would be fought by an antagonized legislature.  See: Gov. Cuomo Expects Challenges To Anti-Corruption Commission Subpoenas, by Ken Lovett, October 21, 2013.

So, with the latest news the commission is investigating and subpoenaing the State Democratic Party, the Senate Republican campaign committee and the Independence Party, but still notREBNY.  By taking our cues from what is not being done, does that mean that REBNY, the Real Estate Board of New York, as the last untouchable, is more powerful than the Democratic, Republican and Independence parties?  Surprise, surprise!  There are, after all, those who would have always maintained that the way things are run in New York REBNY must be the real power in charge.

Reading Citizens Defending Libraries flyer before entering  Friends of Brooklyn Heights Branch Library October 21st fund raising gala- Author Evan Hughs enters captured by Jonathan Barkey's photography

A good place to start this article is with the deliberate underfunding of New York City libraries by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg at a time of their greatly increasing use. . . 

At City Council budget hearings at the beginning of June, Anthony W. Marx and Linda Johnson, the respective heads of the New York Public Library and the Brooklyn Public Library, testified that they had a problem approaching donors asking that they give monies to fund the libraries because they cannot make a `credible’ case that any money given to the libraries by such donors will not be immediately subtracted out by Mayor Bloomberg in budget cuts to the system.  Citizens Defending Libraries (a group I helped found) followed up at that hearing with testimony that it was also not possible to make a credible case to potential donors that funds given to libraries would not be squandered in real estate deals as libraries like Donnell get sold off at a fraction of their value to the public.  (See: Testimony By Citizens Defending Libraries At June 5, 2013 City Council Committee Hearing On Library Budget Issues.)  Citizens Defending Libraries has also given similar testimony on more recent occasions.  (See: Testimony By Citizens Defending Libraries At June 27, 2013 State Assembly Committee Hearing On Selling New York City Libraries and Report on Monday, September 30th City Council Hearing On Sell-off of NYC Libraries Plus Testimony of Citizens Defending Libraries.)
  
Citizens Defending Libraries might have gone a step further in its testimony: Not only is it a concern that libraries paid for with taxpayer and charitable contributions will be wasted when libraries are sold; donors ought also be concerned that their donations will be directly used to sell, shrink and dismantle New York’s library system assets.

This was the concern raised by Citizens Defending Libraries when the Friends of Brooklyn Heights Branch Library held a fund raising gala event on October 21st that featured Evan Hughs, author of “Literary Brooklyn.”  See: ‘Literary Brooklyn’ gala celebrates 20 years of the Friends of the Brooklyn Heights Branch Library, by Samantha Samel & Mary Frost, Brooklyn Daily Eagle and Friends of Brooklyn Heights Branch Library to hold 20th Anniversary gala fundraiser, by Samantha Samel, October 17, 2013, Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

Why?   Because the Friends of Brooklyn Heights Branch Library holding the gala and taking donations from people wanting to “support” the library has been playing a key role in easing the path and moving forward the sale Brooklyn Heights library.  It has given cover to the Brooklyn Heights Association to similarly advance the probability of a sale with the BHA saying its is “simply supporting the position of the librarians and the Friends of the Library.” See: Saturday, April 13, 2013, Condoning The Sale and Shrinkage Of The Brooklyn Heights Library, Does The Brooklyn Heights Associations Think Of Friends Group As A Fig Leaf? It Should Think Again.

So it was that Citizens Defending Libraries handed out flyers to those entering the event, saying: “Please don’t allow your money be used to sell and shrink public libraries.”  

Citizens Defending Libraries flyer for event

It urged:

    •    Please donate money only on condition of its proper use-  Put the following restrictive endorsement on the back of the check for any donation you make: "This check may only be deposited on condition that the BPL not sell off libraries, The Brooklyn Heights and Pacific Libraries properties included."

And cautioned:

    •    If you give money to the Brooklyn Public Library and you do not make your gift upon such conditions you should assume that your money will be used to advance real estate deals that benefit developers, not the public.

The Friends group and the BHA take pains to distinguish that they are not supporting the sale and shrinkage of the library, asserting that they are only condoning or not opposing the sale, but that is a fine distinction that seeks to overlook the practical effect of their actions.  Meanwhile, there are attempts to represent that something quite the opposite is happening.  In its article about the gala the Brooklyn Eagle quotes Friends group president Deborah Hallen representing herself not as someone condoning the dismantling of the Brooklyn Heights Library but as a “watchdog” for the library:

Hallen said that FBHBL’s role is to be the best watchdog as possible for the Heights branch

My response as set forth in a comment to that Brooklyn Eagle article (some of which was also addressed in the flyer handed out that night):

President Hallen of FBHBL [the so-called “Friends” group] continues to play a duplicitous game when she  represents the “FBHBL’s role . . .to be the best watchdog as possible for the Heights branch.”

Ms. Hallen has never offered the clarification Citizens Defending Libraries has long requested: Does she believe that she and the FBHBL can oppose the BPL’s plan in any respect at all, or must she and the FBHBL support the BPL’s planned sale and shrinkage in all respects?   She has circulated guidance to the effect that the FBHBL cannot oppose the BPL’s plan in any respect at all, meaning that the FBHBL can’t complain about even the smallest detail of the BPL’s plans.  She has emailed her FBHBL trustees telling them in very emphatic and specific terms that they cannot oppose this sale-for-shrinkage of the library and that she wants resignations from any of the trustees who want to tell her “we need to stop the sale.”

It seems rather evident that Hallen favors the sale and looks for opportunities to drive it forward despite sometimes suggesting to people that she privately, in her personal capacity, opposes the sale and shrinkage but just can’t oppose it as part of the FBHBL group.  Why else would she seek to diminish reaction to the sale-for-shrinkage of the library by adopting and repromulgating the BPL’s talking point that the reduction from 63,000 square feet of space to just 20,000 square feet of space (one quarter of it underground) somehow won’t reduce the “usable” floor space?  Her careful parsing of language here, mimicking the BPL’s, is specifically meant to obfuscate for the casual reader that the planned sale-for-shrinkage envisions the eviction of the Business and Career Library portion of the library.  Thus she seeks to disregard what, even by her calculations, would be a 50% reduction of the library’s size.

The FBHBL’s role is obfuscation, not that of watchdog.  

Raising money for a library that is to be sold and shrunk?  It does seem odd.  The attempt to address the oddity came in the form of statements from Judy Stanton, Executive Director of the Brooklyn Heights Association, that the money was for “books.”  But this assertion takes on its own odd cast when you notice that books are disappearing from the shelves of the Brooklyn Heights library; The books that were previously there are not any longer as they make way for the pending real estate deal and shrinkage.  See: Saturday, September 14, 2013, Empty Bookshelves As Library Officials Formulate A New Vision of Libraries: A Vision Where The Real Estate Will Be Sold Off.

Just one of the many pictures in the linked to article of empty library shelves in the Brooklyn Heights library and in other NYC libraries being readied for sale

The Brooklyn Eagle said that at the event Mr. Hughs spoke about Norman Mailer’s“conviction that something important is always at stake in a book” and noted that “Libraries . . function with a similar standpoint.”  That said, with all the books that are disappearing and the dismantling of NYC libraries, a lot that is at stake is being lost.

There were reportedly 50 to 70 attendees at the Friends gala.  Many of them were appreciative of the points raised in the Citizens Defending Libraries flyer, with a fair number seeming surprised to think about the information and points presented.  A few attending were from Citizens Defending Libraries.  Outside, Citizens Defending Libraries may have collected more new signatures for its petition than there were people attending the event, though that wasn't the original intention of the evening.  Most people in Brooklyn Heights oppose the sale of their library, probably well over 95%, but there are still many people who still do not know that libraries are being sold off.  Even so, even as the gala was going on, you could look in the window of the library to see the empty shelves cleared of books.

The absence of books in the library can be seen from the street at night when the library is closed.  If and when the library is actually sold off to a developer for development will we look in to see worse?

It is not just giving money in Brooklyn that poses a concern.  Donated money and taxpayer dollars are being used to fund the efforts to sell off libraries in Manhattan.  The sale of the very important and beloved Donnell library paved the way for more library sales and shrinkage by the New York Public Library with the proposed consolidating shrinkage of its Central Library Plan, recently redubbed the “42nd Street Library Renovation.”  The plan is now in disarray with nothing workable currently before the public because activists were able to bring attention to how rushed and poorly conceived it was.  Nevertheless, the NYPL has hired a very high-priced lobbyists, the Parkside Group, to promote what currently is impossible to identify as anything but just a library sell-off and shrinkage. (See: New York Public Library Hires Firm to Promote Renovation Plan, by Robin Pogrebin, October 24, 2013)

One of the reader comments to the article:

I really hope it's not donor $$ that's being used for this PR campaign.

My response:

It is donor money. And taxpayer money too.

Citizens Defending Libraries testified at the City Council hearing on the selling off of the libraries about the impropriety of using such money for lobbying and compared it to situations where the New York State Attorney General has investigated in the past.  (See: Report on Monday, September 30th City Council Hearing On Sell-off of NYC Libraries Plus Testimony of Citizens Defending Libraries.)

Another reader, Susan Bernofsky, commented as follows:

What a shockingly poor use of the library's resources. At a time when our libraries are in crisis, NYPL is handing over a nice fat wad to a consulting firm that will not help improve the library in any way, it'll just help the Board of Trustees sugar-coat a plan that the community has been opposing because it's bad for the community. Vote of no confidence!

How much donor and taxpayer money will be directed to this high priced lobbyist?  The word is that the initial contract is structured to fly low on the radar screen stated to be apparently lower payments, but one suspicious reader providing a link says this:

$25,000? You know, that's just their retainer. Monthly.
The article doesn't make this fact clear.

Source:
http://www.gaebler.com/How-Much-Does-It-Cost-to-Hire-a-Lobbyist.htm

Powerful, politically-connected lobbying firms like the Parkside Group don't come cheap; you know that's one fat contract. As a retired PR professional, I'd put the Library's annual outlay for their services at a minimum of $1.5 - 2 Million --Likely more; even as high as 5M.

Do you remember the New York Public Library begging the public for contributions about six months ago? Now we know what they're spending our money on. It sure isn't on books, computers, librarians or longer hours at my branch.

This is truly a sad, sad state of affairs.

How outrageous can it get in tracing donations back to those who would put their efforts behind selling off New York’s libraries?  There is another evening gala fund raising event coming up on Monday, November 4th.  This one is held being held by the NYPL, its annual Library Lions Gala.   Most of the honorees like “Stephen Sondheim, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony award-winning composer and lyricist” are pretty noncontroversial, but the headliner for the evening is none other than “Michael R. Bloomberg, Mayor of the City of New York.”

Telling you to "DONATE NOW" the NYPL's webpage for the November 4th Library Lions event noting that it will be honoring library defunder Michael Bloomberg as the headliner above other honorees Katherine Boo, Helen Bernstein,  Junot Diaz, Marilynne Robinson and Stephen Sondheim

Remember how I said that Mayor Bloomberg’s deliberate underfunding of the libraries at a time of increasing use was good place to beginning this article?  Well it is also a good place to end this article.

Scott Sherman, in his recent article for the Nation (The Hidden History of New York City’s Central Library Plan- Why did one of the world’s greatest libraries adopt a $300 million transformation without any real public debate? August 28, 2013) was able to inform us, based his review of the NYPL’s minutes, that in the summer of 2007 (before Donnell was sold) the Bloomberg administration, including in the person of Bloomberg’s chief adviser and political strategist, First Deputy Mayor Patricia Harris, blessed the consolidating shrinkage of the library sales with indication of its enthusiasm.

It was afterwards that the mayor cut library funding way back to an astoundingly low level.  That low level of funding is now cited as a rationale for the selling off of New York City’s libraries.

From the pen of Mark Hurwitt

And now, at a fund raising event, an event where people will be asked to give money to support the libraries, the principal honoree will be Mr. Bloomberg himself, the defunder of libraries!  Does NYPL president Anthony Marx not remember the testimony he delivered before the City Council in June?  Does he not remember expressing how difficult it was to deliver potential donors ‘credible’ assurance that their money will be properly used?

Mayoral candidate de Blasio with Citizens Defending Libraries at 42nd Street library in July

The November 4th event is the evening before election day!  Presumably, the election of Bill de Blasio the next day will be viewed as a profound rejection of the Bloomberg legacy.  Mr. de Blasio has called for a halt to the sale of New York City's libraries.  See: PHOTOS & VIDEO & MORE- First half of July 2013: Two lawsuits against the Central Library Plan, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio Comes Out Against CLP.  The NYPL says it won't be producing any new plans to sell off and shrink libraries until after Mr. de Blasio takes office.

Author Evan Hughs enters to speak at the gala

Library?- The design to 'replace' Donnell

The bleacher/stairs can be used to show people David Niven movies in the daylight

Who knows what will serve as inspiration for the fertile imagination?  Or, as the case may be, for the not-so-fertile imagination.

Previously, it was once supposed that the design (above) for the largely underground and bookless “library” that is supposed to suffice (at less than one-third the size) as a replacement for the formerly magnificent and beloved Donnell Library (sold off to net only a fraction of its value to the public) was the design (below) for a very non-library space, a Prada store.  See: Friday, May 24, 2013, Previews Of The Proposed New Donnell Library: The NYPL Unveils Its Version Of The “Silk Purse” Libraries It Envisions For Our Future.

The Prada store the library design resembles

Close enough, I suppose, but now it turns out that there is a good chance that inspiration for the non-library design came from another source (see below), the Musashino Art University Museum & Library.

From A AS Architecture

From Flicker

The design for this space, part museum and art gallery (and part. . . what else?). . .  intentionally flaunts its absence of books as it ostensibly “proposes a new relation between the user and the books” (or, more precisely, the physical absence thereof).  (See: Musashino Art University Museum & Library / Sou Fujimoto, 28 Jun 2011. ArchDaily, accessed October, 31, 2013.


Going to the Architectural Daily link provided above you can hear architect Sou Fujimoto explain that while information technology has no concrete existence, people with physical bodies need to feel like they live in a real world (with the light shifting during the day and seasons being important!).  Apparently to give that sense of reality he filled this environment with its theme of empty bookshelves.  He’s quoted: “I imagined books, bookshelves, light and the atmosphere,” a “dreamlike” space “made from [empty] bookshelves.”

The concept of the “idea” of books filling in for actual books may explain a lot.  When the design for the new shrunken underground Donnell was presented to the local community board the architect was asked about one rendering involving many books that stood out amongst the multiple others that showed very few books: The rendering showed a high wall of books that was literally impossible because it would have violated codes, regulations together with basic practicality and safety itself (see below).  The architect explained that this was not a real depiction of books or the way that they would be.  The rendering was only intended to show that the idea of books is conceptually important, “just simply to say that books are important to us, the books are important to the library.”

A slide shown in both presentations showing what the books in the library won't really look like, but showing that having books in a library is conceptionally important

That concept could have cribbed from the Japanese gallery meditation on books as a dreamlike theme suggesting reality rather than the real thing.

Is it just coincidence that NYPL’s design for what is to replace Donnell is so similar to the earlier Japanese one?  When asked, the architect for the NYPL design said that NYPL officials hadn’t specified anything in terms of a book count or a required square foot area for books.  But what if it was actually the reverse?  What if, instead of just neglecting to express an NYPL goal of having a minimum number of books on site, the library administration officials overseeing the project had instead expressed a goal of having some sort of  `library of the future' that would avoid physical books?  Wouldn’t the architects then, perhaps simply by Googling it up, have come across the bookless Japanese space whose empty shelves suggested the motif of books while actually dispensing with them?

It could have happened that way, or maybe the inspiration came from the fact that the shelves of New York City libraries are already actually beginning to look much like that sparse Japanese space as they are emptied in preparation for sales as the system is shrunk to manufacture real estate deals.  Compare the photos below of the Japanese space with the New York library shelves from the following article (where even more such photos can be found): Saturday, September 14, 2013, Empty Bookshelves As Library Officials Formulate A New Vision of Libraries: A Vision Where The Real Estate Will Be Sold Off.

The two above images are from ArchDaily

Mid-Manhattan Library, up for sale

Brooklyn Heights Library, RFP out for its sale

SIBL, Science, Industry and Business Library, being sold- more pictures of empty shelves in various libraries being sold here

However well the aspiration of having bookless libraries may fit in the goals that current library administrators have of vacating the library real estate they are preparing for sale, those administrators should give some thought to the fact that a recent Pew poll says that people still want physical books in the libraries, including the new young “tech-savvy” generation just as much as the old, if not more so.  (See: School Library Journal: Pew Study: Teens Still Love Print Media, ‘Traditional’ Library Services, by Karyn M. Peterson, June 25, 2013).

Before library administration officials rush to adopt new models that exile physical books from the premises perhaps they should read the Scientific American article this past month that tells us that our brains are probably hardwired to learn and retain facts better when reading physicalbooks.  See: The Reading Brain in the Digital Age- Why Paper Still Beats Screens (Why the Brain Prefers Paper), by Ferris Jabr, November 2013.

If award-winning author Neil Gaiman were advising our library administration officials, he too would caution them about the criticality of retaining physical books.  In a speech he gave this month covered by Britain’s The Guardian he addressed the value of reading, the importance of defending libraries and spoke about the future of physical books saying, “I do not believe that all books will or should migrate onto screens” observing that:

a physical book is like a shark. Sharks are old: there were sharks in the ocean before the dinosaurs. And the reason there are still sharks around is that sharks are better at being sharks than anything else is. Physical books are tough, hard to destroy, bath-resistant, solar-operated, feel good in your hand: they are good at being books, and there will always be a place for them.   

(See: Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming, October 15, 2013.)

Let’s hope that one place where there will always be a place for physical books is in our libraries.

I want to thank the troops of Citizens Defending Libraries (petition here), a group I helped found to protect libraries from being sold off to benefit developers, not the public.  Without their help I might have overlooked the Musashino Art University Museum & Library design and some of the articles I have mentioned above.

Mock up of portion of Musashino

"Libraries Not Luxury Condos"? Or "Hospitals Not Luxury Condos"- Same thing, really, although a little Photoshop magic helped this de Balsio campaign ad bridge the very small difference.

Here is some bad news for New Yorkers who love their libraries (somewhat ameliorated) coupled with some good news, all courtesy of the Wall Street Journal.

The bad news is that Joe Lhota the Conservative Republican candidate for NYC Mayor and former NYC budget director, who ought to be a model of fiscal probity, loves the inanity of spending what could easily be around a half billion dollars on the NYPL's Central Library Plan (now redubbed “42nd Street Library Renovation.”) to sell and shrink NYC Libraries.  Lhota gave a quote to this effect for publication, apparently believing that library lovers don't read the Wall Street Journal.  Wrong!  Maybe Mr. Lhota believes that only real estate developers and Stephen A. Schwarzman's friends read the Journal.  This singular ineptitude handily illustrates why Lhota has virtually no chance of being elected mayor this year.  Library lovers can consider those odds the ameliorating factor.

The good news is that candidate de Blasio, through his spokesperson quoted in the Journal, sounds as firmly on the side of library lovers as ever.

Here is what's in the Journal about each of the candidate’s positions on that sell-off of libraries and consolidating shrinkage whereby the NYPL's Central Library Plan would cram the 300,000 square feet of space from the Mid-Manhattan and Science, Industry and Business Library (SIBL) into a very small amount of space in the Central Reference Library whilst ripping out its venerated and historic research stacks.   

Mr. de Blasio has called for a financial audit and review of the project and, according to his spokesman, "believes that it was made without enough forethought to the building's historical and cultural integrity."

As for Mr. Lhota?

"I love it," he said of the renovation. "We've got to make sure that our facilities change and evolve with the world around us."

(See: NY Culture- On Arts, Mayor 'a Hard Act to Follow'- New York's Cultural Institutions Are Wondering: What's Next? By Jennifer Maloney, Oct. 31, 2013.)

We should heartily thank the Wall Street Journal for this report.  What’s tragic is that no other local news organs have yet covered the split between the candidates on this issue, including, very importantly, the New York Times and WNYC.  The issue not being reported upon is actually much bigger. . .  The Central Library Plan is essentially an even larger scale version of the Donnell Library sell-off debacle.  .  Together, they are emblematic of citywide plans to sell and underfund libraries as the system is shrunk at a time of significantly increasing use.

Since the beginning of his campaign Mr. Lhota has been unwilling to supply Citizens Defending Libraries (a group I helped found) with a statement of his position about the sale and shrinkage of city libraries.   When Citizens Defending Libraries held its Mayoral Forum on Libraries August 30th Mr. Lhota’s campaign feinted  (declining to attend the forum), saying that Mr. Lhota soon wished to meet with Citizens Defending Libraries to supply his campaign postion on the sell-offs.  He never did.

Meanwhile, Mr. Lhota’s campaign posted the following on its website.  It is the only mention of libraries and it is a reference to selling public property, selling their air rights (emphasis supplied):

As mayor, Joe will:

    * * * *
Undertake a complete inventory of vacant and underutilized land in New York City to create more opportunities to develop affordable housing. For example, if a post office shuts down, we should use that land for affordable housing.

Undertake a complete inventory of available air rights from city-owned properties like schools, libraries and firehouses to create revenue for the city, while incentivizing developers to utilize the air rights to create low and middle income housing—housing that can be affordable for our teachers, firefighters, police officers and other civil servants.

]Utilize land-use planning studies of various neighborhoods to plan and target areas to upzone.  The goal is to permit large scale development where we can mandate low and middle income units as part of the rezoning.

It is a campaign stance (campaign stances are invariably tailored to sound good) and doesn’t actually say that the city’s libraries would be closed and shrunk when the development rights that go with them are sold off as is presently exactly what’s happening.  Instead of allowing that the sell-offs might result in top-of-the-market luxury condominiums, hotels or office towers which is what is, in fact, what’s actually happening now, it holds out the campaign-promise carrot of affordable housing.  Really?  What it describes sounds too uncomfortably close to what is presently happening.  Indeed, why does it fail to say that we won’t continue to sell libraries for shrinkage?  That’s suspicious, and if there is any doubt about where Mr. Lhota’s judgements might take him on these things he has cleared it up by giving his enthusiastic endorsement of the Central Library Plan to the Journal.

There is also the issue of how Mr. Lhota judgement when it comes to public-private partnerships brought into play for the selling of libraries and how this get confused and perceptions manipulated when it comes to who is actually benefitting from them, the public or the private "partner"?  (See: Wednesday, September 26, 2012, Promoting Obfuscation of What Government Does and Doesn’t Do To Give The Private Sector (Including Ratner) More Credit, but compare Monday, October 28, 2013, Across from arena, Lhota slams de Blasio (again) on Atlantic Yards, claims Ratner close to default on MTA railyard last year (video) .

Mr. de Blasio on the other hand has come out against the sell-off of public assets, libraries and other properties like hospitals and NYCHA public housing.  For more on Mr. de Blasio’s position calling for a halt to the selling off of public libraries see the following from Citizens Defending Libraries (two other candidates still on the ballot for Mayor, Randy Credico of the Tax Wall Street Party and Green Party candidate Anthony Gronowicz, heartily oppose the library sell-offs and shrinkages): Mayoral Forum on Libraries Held August 30, 2013 and PHOTOS & VIDEO & MORE- First half of July 2013: Two lawsuits against the Central Library Plan, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio Comes Out Against CLP.

Chiara de Blasio, candidate de Blasio's daughter vouching for her father about the the sell-offs of public assets we won't see if her father is elected.

The fact that Mr. de Blasio is prominently opposing the sale of public property across the spectrum provides important reassurance, as does the fact that he is likely to be kept in check by the new Public Advocate, Tish James, a fellow Democrat who comes into office after a crushing 60-40 defeat of her opponent during the primary run-off likely due in part to the fact that Ms. James opposed the selling off of libraries early and steadfastly.  (See: Monday, September 23, 2013, Sell-Offs Of New York City Libraries Gets Focus In Public Advocate Runoff Race Between James and Squadron.)

In one of Mr. de Blasio’s most frequently run campaign ads he features his daughter and his son with his daughter assuring the voters that her father would not sell off hospitals for “luxury condos.”  That’s basically the same as the library issue.  And his kids vouch for him on this!

In campaign ad candidate de Blasio's daughter vouches her father won't sell off public assets like hospitals

By the way, while we must thank the Wall Street Journal for covering the candidate split on this library issue, one of our readers commented about the Wall Street Journal that it seems to represent Mr. Bloomberg to be an important “philanthropist” (“As a philanthropist, he is believed to have given more than $200 million to arts and social-service organizations since 2002”) that isn’t really the case.  More on what’s really the case here:  Wednesday, March 6, 2013, Bloomberg’s Increasing Annual Wealth: 1996 to 2013, Plus Updates On His Annual “Charitable” Giving.

The reader is correct.  Credit is often given where it isn’t due.  This Monday night, on the eve of the election for the new Mayor, the NYPL will anomalously give its headline award at its annual fund raiser to Mr. Bloomberg, who as mayor is responsible for an unprecedented defunding of the city’s libraries (see below) while presiding over plans to sell them.  (See: Wednesday, October 30, 2013, Conundrum For Those Wanting To Donate To Libraries: People Who Would Use Our Donations To Shrink and Sell Off Libraries.)

That downward blue line on funding while use (upward lines) ascended is what Bloomberg did to the libraries just after his third term was won and just as he was blessing the sell-off of NYC libraries

NYPL's "Voices of Support" page for the nonexistent Central Library Plan starting off with praise from the Daily News editorial page

Gotcha!  Smile!  Say Cheese!  You’re on Candid Camera!   Caught in the act!

The NYPL (New York Public Library) has just documented the blank check mentality it expects from a cast of supporters it believes can be trotted out to reliably  . .  

. . . To reliably what? We’ll get to that in a moment.                   

The other day the New York Times ran a story letting us know that the NYPL is in bigger trouble than most probably suspected.  It won't be releasing the “new” version of the Central Library Plan (now AKAing as the “42nd Street Library Renovation Plan”) this fall as planned.  The plan’s obvious flaws are too difficult to paper over in the time frame they expected!  (See: New York Public Library Postpones Release of Revised Renovation Plan, by Robin Pogrebin, October 23, 2013.)

Just so everybody knows (pardon any repetition): The Central Library Plan (CLP) is the consolidating shrinkage of more than 380,000 square feet of library space down to just 80,000 square feet of space.  Two significant pieces of Manhattan library real estate would be sold, going the way of the 53rd Street five-story Donnell Library before them: the Mid-Manhattan and SIBL (Science, Industry and Business Library).  As part of the big squeeze, the research stacks of the 42nd Street Central Reference Library would be ripped out, the books banished.

Don’t expect the “new” version of the CLP to be anything more than the old version with a new veneer, its real estate sale and shrinkage goals still intact, still preeminent and still driving all the decisions being made.

What do you do in the interim if you are the NYPL and you are beset by such difficulties?  You dig your grave deeper by putting up a "Voices of Support" page for the nonexistent plan, thus having your “supporters” on record as supporting virtually anything and virtually nothing.

Here is my comment on the Times article:

Putting up a "Voices of Support" page for a nonexistent plan? All that exists of the plan that can be supported is a plan to sell off library real estate, shrink library space way down (from more than 380,000 squarer feet to 80,000) and exile books. Statements of support from a group like Urban Librarians Unite? Research the group and see what that means. A healthy antidote to these "Voices of Support" with lots of specifics can be found in the testimony that Citizens Defending Libraries delivered at the recent City Council hearings on the sell-off of public libraries around the city, available here:

Report on Monday, September 30th City Council Hearing On Sell-off of NYC Libraries Plus Testimony of Citizens Defending Libraries

    Michael D. D. White
    Citizens Defending Libraries

The Times article doesn’t mention that furtherance of the half-baked plan may have been impeded somewhat by the two lawsuits that have been brought against the plan, including the one in which Citizens Defending Libraries (I am a cofounder) is a plaintiff.  (The article doesn’t mention the lawsuits, but comments can.)  The timing of the article was somewhat luscious in that the NYPL’s announcement came just one day after Citizens Defending Libraries delivered its 16,000 plus signature petition (most of those signatures are online) to Mayor Bloomberg at City Hall.

Who are some of these supporters the NYPL feels can be depended upon to support, sight unseen, a plan for sale of library real estate, shrinkage of libraries and banishment of books?  Urban Librarians Unite, Kathy Wylde of the New York City Partnership and the Building and Constructions Trades Council of New York.

Kathy Wylde testifying for the Atlantic Yards megadevelopment at the MTA on Monday, June 22, 2009 after it had markedly degenerated

We’ve seen Ms. Kathy Wylde in this blank-check approval mode, before when she supported the Atlantic Yards mega-development.   At an MTA hearing Monday, June 22, 2009, after the proposal for the Atlantic Yards mega-development had been vastly changed to the detriment of the public Ms. Wylde testified to support the project, speaking in terms of the Partnership’s long-term support for it, virtually oblivious to the fact that the project was so much worse and less defensible than ever.  (See: Tuesday, June 30, 2009, The Partnership for New York City's evolving (and misleading) support for Atlantic Yards.)

In the case of the NYPL’s Central Library Plan, Ms. Wylde’s blank check support will be the inverse of Atlantic Yards: In the case of Atlantic Yards, supporting the megaproject from the beginning, Ms. Wylde continued her unswerving support as the megaproject degenerated profoundly; in the case of the CLP, she is now documented as supporting from day-one a plan so bad that its authors had to withdraw it out of embarrassment.  In either case, the minimum standard for her fixed support as things shift is a discernibly low bar.

Unfortunately, what we get from power-elite representatives like Ms. Wylde is the bottom line of wealth speaking to wealth, resulting in what many of us see as rigged deals, where the vagaries of any public benefit are relegated to afterthoughts to be primped up for public consumption afterwards. . 

Support from Urban Librarians Unite for a plan about which nothing is known except that libraries will be sold and shrunk and books banished may seem strange, until you closely consider that it is almost seems as if Urban Librarians Unite was created with such support being their primary purpose.  See: Saturday, June 8, 2013, Irony Of Ironies: Urban Librarians Unite, Holding A “We Will Not Be Shushed Read In June 8 & 9th! Sign Up Now!” Event, Wanted To “Shush” Citizens Defending Libraries About It.

Support by the Building and Constructions Trades Council of New York?  I have previously observed construction unions’ Pavlovian support for what creates construction jobs irrespective of public harm:

Construction unions are interested in the churn. They are not interested in what is in the public interest (hence their partnering with Ratner). Frank Lloyd Wright once facetiously proposed that all of Manhattan be leveled and replaced by just two phenomenally enormous tall towers. I often think that if such a plan were proposed today the construction unions would be out in droves to support it, not because it was in the public interest but because it would mean a huge amount of union jobs, both demolition and construction.

(See: Friday, March 18, 2011, The Real Question to Ask About the Ratner Bait-and-Switch Approach on Atlantic Yards.)

When it comes to libraries, this reflex on the part of construction unions hurts not only the public, but also other union workers as well.  As was mentioned at a forum at Barnard College this past week (For the Public Good: Public Accountability in NYC, A panel with Elizabeth Blackmar, Aaron Pallas, and J. Phillip Thompson, Thursday, November 7, 2013) the selling off and privatization of public assets like schools and parks is often intertwined with motivations of disenfranchising union workers.

The NYPL’s false step of bringing in the construction unions and creating this documenting gallery of automatic supporters, the likes of those above, arrayed together with others such as the soundly-defeated candidate for mayor City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is probably the first work of the Parkside Group, the NYPL’s expensive new lobbyist.  News of the hiring of the Parkside Group surfaced in the New York Times the day after it was announced that the NYPL wouldn’t be releasing its plans to the public this fall. (See: New York Public Library Hires Firm to Promote Renovation Plan, by Robin Pogrebin, October 24, 2013.) 

The hiring of the Parkside Group means that, in these maneuvers of arraying all these automatic supporters and others, library administration officials are prepared to divert huge amounts of public money and charitable donations into arguing for the sell-off of these public assets for the ultimate benefit of the real estate community.  (See: Wednesday, October 30, 2013, Conundrum For Those Wanting To Donate To Libraries: People Who Would Use Our Donations To Shrink and Sell Off Libraries.)

When will the NYPL be releasing the new edition of its plans?  According to the Times the NYPL said in a statement:

We now expect to unveil the new design sometime after the New Year.

Sometime after January 1st?  What’s important about that January 1st date?  That’s the date when Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio will take office at the city helm.  It would have been impossible for the NYPL to have released more bad plans during the mayoral race as de Blasio would have had to reject them, for the sake of his campaign’s consistency and to keep himself appropriately distinguished from his opposition.  (Candidate de Blasio had already stood on the steps of the 42nd Street Central Reference Library calling for a halt to the sale of New York City’s public libraries.)  (See: Sunday, November 3, 2013, Candidate Lhota's Flub!: He thinks library lovers don't read the Wall Street Journal!!- Checking In On Mayoral Candidates’ Library Positions, de Blasio vs Lhota.)

In addition, any bedraggled release of plans at the tail end of the Bloomberg administration would just associate a design rehash more firmly with the increasingly unpopular departing Bloomberg administration.  No doubt, what the NYPL will want to do is seek a willing collaborator in the de Blasio administration to make it somehow seem that they have a plan that can be considered as “new” and different and probably that the plan is even, in part, a response to Mr. de Blasio’s own high standards and insistence on improvement.  At that point they will trot out again the supporters now on record as supporting the old, discredited plan and hope that nobody will be keeping track.

Chiara de Blasio, candidate de Blasio's daughter vouching for her father about the the sell-offs of public assets we won't see if her father is elected.

Will de Blasio fall for it, or, acting in collaboration, expect that others will?  During the campaign his daughter, Chiara, gave us assurance about where her father stood respecting the sale of public assets.  In the end, the sale of NYC public libraries will remain at bottom what it is: real estate deals for the benefit of developers, not the public.  I don’t think de Blasio will fall for such an NYPL ruse and I certainly hope that when it comes to these matters he will steer his own unveering course.

Preserve Park Slope's flyer announcing the Thursday Community Board 6 meeting about the LICH expansion

I usually like to have more information before I write an article, but maybe the fact that I have so little information to provide here is evidence that the public has far too little information about some significant and very big decisions that are being made concerning development in the historic brownstone neighborhoods of Cobble Hill, Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope, and, in connection therewith, the health and hospital systems serving those neighborhoods and the rest of Brooklyn . . .

. . .  There is a public hearing scheduled before Brooklyn’s Community Board 6 for 6:00 PM, this coming Thursday, November 21st (John Jay High School, 237 7th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY).   Will the public be equipped with the information it needs to deal with it?  The hearing is about the proposed 500,000 square foot expansion of Methodist Hospital in Park Slope, an expansion that will apparently increase the previously reported size of the hospital’s physical plant by about 60%.  That’s ostensibly all that the hearing is about, but mightn’t it really be about a lot more? . . .

Image from Preserve Park Slope's Facebook page showing scale of Methodist expansion in context near Prospect Park in background

. . . At the same time very significant expenditures will be directed into this Methodist expansion, state health department officials have been involved with the intricacies of shutting down nearby Long Island College Hospital (LICH) in Cobble Hill where it borders Brooklyn Heights.  Don’t let anyone tell you this isn’t a public spending issue: In the end it is all paid for and financed through the insurance and government reimbursement rates for which we all pay.  In addition to LICH, another nearby hospital, Interfaith Hospital, providing services to Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights and Brownsville, is under threat.

Selling Off Long Island College Hospital Real Estate

Recent reports in the real estate press say that the closing of LICH would put 200,000 square feet of real estate on the market but that figure apparently considers just just the land itself.  More than765,000 square feet of medical facility space would be shut down.  Whatever the total is, it's additional to other LICH medical care facility space that has already been shut down.  In 2008, LICH doctors, alleging the hospital’s real estate assets were being looted, were able to provide a list of previously sold LICH real estate that appeared in a new York Times article:

    •    The Lamm Institute, at 110 Amity Street, fetched $6.123 million

    •    The former International Longshoremen’s Association Medical Center at 340 Court Street, which had been used as a nurses’ residence, $24 million

    •    A building at 145 Sackett Street for $3.1 million

    •    St. Peter’s Church and School on Hicks Street, which had been used as a nursing and radiology school

    •    A dozen brownstones on Atlantic Avenue and Henry Street

(See: Doctors Say Hospital Is Falling Victim to Its Own Real Estate Value, By Anemona Hartcollis, June 10, 2008.)

The article said that the real estate in the last two bullets above, the dozen brownstones plus the church and schools, were sold off for the low-sounding figure of  “about $16 million.” (The big downturn in real estate prices following the peak of the bubble came later in September of 2008.)

A Google Earth view of the LICH complex, next to the BQE, elevated and overlooking expanses of harbor just a little further on

A much more recent New York Times article about LICH, almost exactly five years later, underscored the attraction of selling off LICH’s real estate, hardly making it seem like it should be going for low values:

With its dwindling patient population, the huge red brick building in Cobble Hill stands on the border of Brooklyn Heights, with sweeping views of the Manhattan skyline that make it more valuable as a real estate development site than as a medical center.

(See: Nurses Roam Empty Halls as Long Island College Hospital Is Prepared to Close, by Anemona Hartcollis, July 18, 2013.)
What a difference five years can make!  The “dwindling patient population” referred to in the summer 2013 article is due to the efforts the hospital owners are making to shut LICH down to effect those real estate sell-offs, even contravening recent court orders, but in the article five years ago Stanley Brezenoff, the president of Continuum, then the owner of the LICH, defended the real estate sales that were then transpiring in these terms:

He said that the company had no plans to close the hospital but acknowledged that it might soon be “reconfigured.”

What else was happening in those intervening five years?  Methodist was working on its plans for its expansion about two and half miles away.

The Real Estate Shell Game Model: St. Vincent's Hospital In Greenwich Village

In that article five years ago Mr. Brezenoff offered another, probably much more truthful observation:

He cited St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan, which has threatened to close if it is not given permission to move the hospital so that some of its landmarked property can be redeveloped into luxury condominiums.

“What’s St. Vincent’s except a real estate strategy?” Mr. Brezenoff said.

Indeed, in the end, with administrator’s eyes on that St. Vincent’s “real estate strategy” what survived at the end of the day was a real estate deal for a developer as St. Vincent’s hospital itself went bankrupt.  See: Tuesday, December 13, 2011, Tough Luck: Heads the Developer Wins, Tails the Public Loses. . Unprincipled Upzoning for Rudin Luxury Apartments at Former St. Vincent’s Site.

When stripped down, St. Vincent’s “real estate strategy” referred to by Mr. Brezenoff essentially amounted to the use of St. Vincent’s special status as a public institution providing “charitable” public benefit to sell off a portion of the Greenwich Village Historical District so as to build at greater density than would have otherwise been permitted.  Property the hospital was divesting itself of was to become residential development.  Some of that residential development involved converting existing health facilities and some was new construction at density greater than normally permitted in the historic district.  At the same time, entirely new facilities for the St. Vincent’s hospital were to be built where a historic building was being taken down.  The new hospital building was going to be enormous and tower over the historic district.

It was all a bit of a real estate shell game.  Those who may have been motivated by the real estate profits from the switcheroos and property put into play ultimately got what they wanted, but those charged with the job of continuing to provide the public with health care services failed.  There were many confusing moving parts and that failure was probably not something that most bystanders would have thought to predict before it happened, but it did.

A developer slide showing the proposed new St. Vincent's tower with a ghostliness that disguised how it wold tower over the historic district.

Model showing more clearly the change in scale a new St. Vincent's was to bring to the historic Greenwich Village Historic District neighborhood

Looked at as if it were a single combined transaction, the shrinkage and extermination of LICH with the concurrent expansion of Methodist, the next nearest hospital in Brooklyn, reiterates virtually all the same elements seen in the St. Vincent’s real estate shell game:

   •     Hospital property will recycled to become expensive new residential development in a very desirable neighborhood,

   •     Some of that residential development may wind up being new and at increased densities greater than the surrounding historic area,

   •     Meanwhile other buildings in a historic neighborhood (though in this case not yet themselves historically designated) will be leveled . . .

    •    . . . so that new hospital facilities can be built that tower over a historic district and recalibrate its sense of scale.

In this case will the new medical facility (unlike St. Vincent’s) actually be built and will it be a success?  That depends in large part on whether the health planning that underlies these ambitions is any good.  If good planning is shunted aside by those led by real estate motivations, like St. Vincent’s, that is far from assured.

Large new Methodist building would be on Park Slope's 8th Avenue between 5th and 6th Streets

Google view of where the expansion woul dbe expected to fit in on the block on the right

Expansion building would be bigger than these existing ones

Is the Methodist Expansion Really Needed?

The public’s worry in this regard should be accentuated by the fact that Thursday’s hearing before Community Board 6 is for a real estate variance to let the Methodist real estate plan proceed and it is being requested to be put in place before the New York State Department of Health has issued a “Certificate of Need” for the expansion, and even before an application has been submitted that frames and defines what this project's developer might argue that need is.  Why?

Meanwhile, events that likely affect such planning are unfolding without any planning the public can perceive.  For instance, after the fact, wouldn’t a sale of all of LICH’s properties make the issuance of a certificate of need for Methodist a tad more credible?  But, conversely, should LICH be shut down before it is decided it makes sense for Methodist to expand?

Build and expand the Methodist medical campus at great expense at the same time other health facilities are being demolished?  No articles in the press have been covering this, but Brooklynites seizing upon the opportunity to comment on an article about the Methodist expansion in the Brooklyn Paper saw the connection immediately and spontaneously debated it at length.

Building From Scratch vs. Utilizing Existing Resources

The conservative economic approach to creating additional value normally involves building upon existing resources rather than demolishing and starting again from scratch.

Nevertheless, it is not necessarily an apples to apples comparison.  With new technologies and surgeries that are more minimally invasive, there is an ongoing shift these days to ambulatory care not requiring hospital beds.  Methodist is reportedly not proposing to add additional beds in the course of its huge expansion, but LICH has many beds.  Methodist may actually be increasing the amount of space devoted to beds so as to have more private or semi-private rooms, while not actually increasing the number of beds (this is not clear).  Even so, adaptive reuse of existing facilities is almost always the least expensive way to go.

Location of Brooklyn Hospitals In Relation To Potential Clientele

Does it make sense to consolidate the shrinking bed population into an expensive and more massive Methodist complex?  One argument that is being given for selling off LICH is that the people in the relatively well-to-do neighborhoods surrounding it are more likely to travel to the major medical complexes of Manhattan for those significant medical needs they can shop for and premeditatedly plan for, thus bypassing the services of LICH except in an emergency.  Do the administrators of Methodist believe that the more super complex they seek to build in Park Slope will survive such an argument to the extent that it is true?  Or do they view themselves as being an extension of the Manhattan complexes because they are part of the growing Presbyterian network that includes the original Columbia Presbyterian complex?

My understanding is that Methodist has historically done well being able to draw from the reasonably wealthy surrounding Parl Slope area, but would a larger, built-up Methodist start drawing the Brooklyn client population that the LICH executioners say go to Manhattan?  If not, Methodist, like LICH or Interfaith, is left to draw from two remaining sets of client populations, those who need emergency care and those looking for local convenience in getting the kind of care that they feel can be dependably delivered without going to a major medical center.

Those two client population sets don’t benefit from a consolidated Brooklyn complex; they benefit from dispersed provisions of resources.  Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio has issued a report as Public Advocate on the reduction of emergency response times if LICH or Interfaith are closed (see illustrative images below).   In terms of local convenience, Methodist is near a stop for the F and G trains, further from others, and difficult to get to by car.  Overall, it is not that convenient.  LICH is a little more accessible by public transportation, and, just off the BQE, more accessible by automobile.

In the future the nearest emergency room might be somewhere else a lot further off

LICH emergency room ambulances

Unknown Expense of Methodist Expansion

I have referred several times to the expense of the Methodist expansion.  What is that expense?  Interestingly, as the public debates these matters Methodist has produced no figures for what its expansion will cost.  That concealment of such critically relevant information is an indication that they don’t want the public to know or think about the expense and that the expense itself is a strong argument against the expansion.

Elsewhere in the system where the Presbyterian network has submitted a Certificate of Need (go to page 41) for a similar ambulatory faculty (including maternity hospital space) to be located at 1283 York Avenue (an extension located across the street from NYP-New York Weill Cornell Center Campus facilities at 525 East 68th Street in Manhattan) its estimated cost is $830,020,454.  Without making too fine a point of guessing the unfurnished Methodist cost figures, that Manhattan facility is comparably sized with a total floor area of 568,801 square feet.

Public vs. Private Expenses and Matters of Interest

Rather than furnish information about what the cost of the project will be Methodist has issued statements (including in its project fact sheet):

Financing

NYM intends to privately finance the project.

What that actually means is unhelpfully vague in world where PR descriptions are plastically used to describe the Ratner/Prokhorov “Barclays” arena as privately paid for when it is financed by municipal bonds and a diversion of New York City’s tax revenue stream.  In 2004 municipal bonds issued by the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York (still outstanding), financed Methodist’s adjacent 100,000 square foot expansion.  It is likely that this new expansion would be similarly paid for by this low cost, taxpayer-subsidized source and certainly no enforceable promise that this would not ultimately be the case.  No matter what, in the end, the insurance payments together with public reimbursements from programs like Medicaid and Medicare, mean that these directed income streams are paying for all the capital improvements in our health care system.  In fact, that’s why health facilities are regulated and the state Department of Health issues Certificates of Need.  Without properly submitted plans at the state level New York cannot get the kind of waivers for funding it needs at the federal level.

It is interesting how protestations that enterprises are “private” are being used to keep the public out of decisions that concern it.  The publicly financed New York Public Library (note the word “public”) largely paid for with taxpayer dollars has also asserted that it should be able to make unimpeded decisions because it argues it is a “private” institution.

What's Planned, What May Happen, A Seismic Detour?

While the Methodist expansion costs may edge into the billion dollar territory and will further cost Park Slope by ripping its historic brownstone fabric, the bang-for-the-buck may be questionable.  Methodist is asserting that of the 300,000 square feet of programmable space in the proposed new building, 220,000 square feet would be used to relocate and concentrate existing services offered by Methodist, and only 80,000 square feet -- just a bit more than 25% -- would be used for expanding services.  See 1st attachment to the BSA application (letter from NYM Sr VP explaining programmatic need), at page 4.  A net gain of only 80,000 square feet?  Mightn’t it then be better to build something far smaller and cheaper, perhaps only adding 80,000 square feet of new services and leave other services where they already are?

But, if the expansion occurred in the fashion Methodist is now requesting might Methodist not actually give the existing space from which it says it will relocate these functions, or might it expend to reoccupy those spaces later?  Things don’t always happen as planned.
Methodist is not now proposing to expand in the way that was originally contemplated when the current zoning was established.  That similar alternative, discussed as an as-of-right alternative, would involve Methodist building on top of an above-and-underground parking lot built back around 2004, as they previously said they meant to do.  Methodist officials say the don’t want to go forward with their original plan because changes in the seismic provisions in the building code which the garage doesn’t meet would make this difficult:

A development consultant from Washington Square Partners said that building on the parking garage would be difficult because of a seismic building code.

(It don’t fit: Residents blast Methodist building plan, by Natalie Musumeci, The Brooklyn Paper, July 12, 2013.)

The relatively smaller existing Methodist buildings on Park Slope's commercial 7th Avenue

A very long paragraph in the Environmental Assessment Statement (Bottom of page K-8) under the heading, “COMPLYING DEVELOPMENT BUILDING SEGMENT OVER EXISTING BELOW-GRADE PARKING GARAGE” makes it seem all the more formidable with sentences like:

Next, the floors and the columns of the existing garage would be demolished because the necessary seismic retrofitting is not possible and the existing columns and foundations are not adequate to support the new 10-story structure that would be constructed on this portion of the site for the Complying Development. Minimal additional excavation would be required since the depth of the existing below-grade garage is already near the required depth of the proposed building. 

A garage recently built for the purpose of being the foundation for a future medical facility and it was not properly designed to withstand earthquakes?  Irrespective of whatever changes there have been to the New York building code with respect to potential seismic activity that seems like poor planning.  If inconvenient to build on it now would Methodist someday in the future build on this parking lot?

Some of Methodist's existing smaller buildings on 7th Street between 7th and 8th Avenue are cleverly scaled and styled to fit in fairly well with brownstones across the street

The Methodist Rationale For Not Taking Over LICH: Superior Methodist Management

It is my understanding that when Methodist officials have been asked why they shouldn’t take over LICH and its facilities instead of building its expansion they cite the superior management of Methodist.  But if management is the sole difference then a transplant of management would seem to be the solution, unless they mean that poor management at LICH has somehow compromised the LICH real estate and other physical assets.  It would seem unlikely that would really be the case.

Toomas M. Sorra, M.D. of Concerned Physicians of LICH tells us that he doubts those commenting negatively know anything “about the physical plant at LICH,” that:

the physical plant has never been an issue, the issue is SUNY's systematic destruction of LICH via closing departments, services, etc.

For more about the looting of LICH’s assets in Noticing New York articles see: Friday, February 15, 2013, Last Night’s Community Meeting To Save Long Island College Hospital- Pictures And The Big Picture and Wednesday, February 13, 2013, One-Stop Petition Shopping: Report On The Brooklyn Heights Association Annual Meeting, LICH and Libraries.

The proposition of getting rid of LICH is not just a question of getting rid of its management or its physical plant.  It is a move that also gets rid of existing staff and potentially unions.

Unions

Right now, in the sort of world we live in, unions provide one of the best, most stalwart defenses when a public asset like LICH is threatened when it should be preserved.  Unions, not always guaranteed to behave altruistically, can also introduce friction against changes in the status quo when such changes might benefit the public.  But, as in the case of conversions of public to charter schools, getting rid of unions represents one more thing that some may even have as a covert but important goal: As labor force pay scales decrease, the ability to jettison a union represents the elimination of bargained-for improvements in worker's lives.  If you come to things with a Bain Capital mind set this may be favorable viewed as “creative destruction,” or it may just be another expression of opportunistic greed.  The problem is that what is happening with our hospitals is already complicated enough without having also to take into account that these motivations also lurk in the mix to complicate matters further.  

One Roof or Two?

Is it really important to bring everyone to one location under one roof?  In upper Manhattan the Presbyterian runs the Allen Hospital which is about 2.9 miles north of the Columbia Presbyterian campus (with which it has integrated function), about the same distance LICH is from Methodist.

The Methodist Expansion Intrusion Into the Scale of Park Slope

7th Avenue on left.  8th Avenue on right.

Methodist provided drawings above from which the perhaps 17-residential stroy equivalent height of the building on 7th Avenue is difficult to calculate and discern.  Above the reverse: 8th Avenue on left.  7th Avenue on right.

What does the scale currently proposed for Methodist mean for Park Slope?

•    The new building, measuring from the down slope 7th Avenue side, is approximately the equivalent of 16 or 17 conventional residential stories.  The height as measured from the up slope side is 146 feet and the slope adds about 15 or twenty feet of height to that.  The Methodist materials seem like they were prepared to obscure that fact and make the measurements for the 7th Avenue side difficult.

•    The new building will likely be visible from Prospect Park.  As yet, there no visual representation showing what that will look like.

•    At least fifteen Park Slope townhouses will be sacrificed.

As Preserve Park Slope points out on its “Frequently Asked Questions” page, “For comparison, less than 1% of all the buildings in Park Slope rise above five stories, or about 50 feet.”  Preserve Park Slope also has an online petition: Oppose the Mega-Complex Being Proposed by New York Methodist Hospital.                   

Methodist rendering showing a view of the building not on context of the surrounding buildings of one third the height

Again: Where's the neighborhood?

The renderings of the expansion released by Methodist show its building close up, not in the context of being three times the size of these surrounding buildings.

Townhouses on 8th Avenue across the street from where new Methodist Building would stand.  New building would eb three times as tall.

The scale at which people in Park Slope are accustomed to living happily?

From Preserve Park Slope- Does this image suffice to convey how the new hospital building would be three times the height of the 8th Avenue townhouses across the street

Another image from Preserve Park Slope

Any tall development comes with shadow studies.  See below. 
Here is a very short shadow study video animation from Preserve Park Slope: Shadow Study- Preserve Park Slope Preserve Park Slope.

 

Some advocates for development would assert that we should relentlessly proceed to levels of ever greater density and that, accordingly, greater and greater density for Park Slope is inevitable and desirable.  Maybe not.  Charles Montgomery has a new book out on the benefits of urban living, including the fact it apparently makes people happier: “Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design.”  Even as he suggests that urban density helps people to be happier, he says that, based on surveys, there is a Goldilocks zone were people are happiest.  People living in cities are happier than those living in suburbs, but those living in city towers are not as happy as those living in more low-rise environments.  See: Does City Living Make Us Happy? Leonard Lopate Show, Monday, November 04, 2013

Google view showing how close the huge expansion would be to Prospect Park

A Bing version of that evidence

What might the expansion look like from Prospect Park?  Still guessing exactly.  Preserve Park Slope generated this image.

Insufficient Information To Reach The Right Decisions

Is Methodist’s big expansion the right decision for Park Slope?  Further, is it right for Brooklyn to close down other hospitals like LICH and Interfaith at the same time?  I have my suspicions that the answer is “No,” but I think that I and the rest of the public have a problem weighing in on these things at the present time because too little information has been furnished.  And yet hospital and state officials would proceed in closing LICH and would give the real estate approval needed to expand Methodist without such information being supplied.

I have asked Methodist a number of questions, intending to make this article more informative.  They have not replied.

What would I suggest to Community Board 6?. . . That it demand, at a minimum, that a Certificate of Need package be supplied before it considers what Methodist should be allowed to do with its real estate.  In addition, the future of LICH and Interfaith should be looked at in the context of an overall plan for Brooklyn’s hospitals.  That’s not where we are at the moment.

Where we are headed at the moment is the de facto implementation of what may be some pretty strange results, without having given any public consideration as to their likely lack of common sense.

The South Court addition which in 2002 added another 42,222 square feet of needed space to the 42nd Street Central Reference Library

The New York Public Library (NYPL) is in the middle of drastically reducing the space in Manhattan’s most important central, destination libraries.

When do you suppose the NYPL was last expanding the space it is now reducing, asserting at the time that the space they then had was insufficient? . .

. .  A not so unimportant, `by the way’ on this (before we revel the answer) is that the huge upcoming reduction of space the NYPL’s proposes in its Central Library Plan (aka “42nd Street Library Renovation), the elimination of 300,000 square feet of space will come at significant New York City taxpayer expense, at least $150 million dollars. . .  Just as the not so long ago expansion of space came at New York City taxpayer expense.

The NYPL’s significant reduction of important midtown Manhattan library space began in 2007 with the sell-off of the Donnell Library on 53rd Street across from MoMA between 5th and 6th Avenues.  The 97,000 square foot, five-story library was sold off at far less than its value to the public.

When then do you think the last expansion of library space before that was?

Was it in 1992 when the city-paid-for Bryant Park expansion was completed?  This expansion, begun in 1987, involved closing Bryant Park for more than four years in order to put 84 miles of bookshelves underneath it and was designed to take the 42nd Street Reference Library’s immediately accessible book collection up to a capacity of 6.2 million books, may be as many as  6.7 million books in a pinch.-  No, the last expansion wasn’t in 1992.

Was it in 1996 when the expansion effected by the city-paid-for Science, Industry and Business Library expansion was completed with the opening of that library?-  No, the last expansion wasn’t in 1996. 

What about 2000 when the NYPL put out its plans to expand (nearly double the size of) the Mid-Manhattan Library by 117,000 square feet?  Or 2001, the year that the Giuliani administration awarded the city funds to effect that expansion?   2003, when those Mid-Manhattan expansion plans were still in effect, the NYPL still intending to go forward with them?  (The Mid-Manhattan expansion plans were set aside later after Chief Operating Officer David Offensend joined the NYPL in 2004.)   No, it was not2000, 2001 or 2003.

The last expansion of the NYPL’s Manhattan space was in 2002 with the completion of a city-paid-for expansion of the Central Reference Library that boosted the size of the Main Building by about 8%, 42,222 square feet, because, as the then President of the NYPL said, additional space was needed.  The expansion was the addition of the Central Reference Library’s new South Court.

Building up library space at taxpayer expense until 2002 and then selling it starting with Donnell in 2007?: There's a startling lesson in how fast ambitions can pivot.

Schematic of the South Court addition published in Metropolis Magazine

The South Court expansion is an addition to the library that is likely off most people’s radar even though it was quietly spectacular about the way it squeezed in extra hidden space.  That’s because it involved filling in what had been a central courtyard within the building and much of it was built underground.  See:  Inside Stories / Six new floors rise within the main branch, Lifestyle Newsday, May 21, 2002, by Mary Voboril.

Schematic of the South Court addition published in Metropolis Magazine

South Court looking up from main entry

The South Court expansion was built when Dr. Paul LeClerc was president of the NYPL.  The project took  two and half years starting in 1999 and finished in 2002 at a total cost of $29 million.  Most of that cost, $17.5 million, was paid for by the city.  The six-floor project with 40 feet below street level, going below the original foundations, added 42,222 square feet to the main building's 527,000 square feet.  (Others supply what may be rounded off figures of 40,000 square feet added to 500,000 square feet.)  The above-ground portion of the expansion brings it to about the same height as the rest of the building.  Originally, when approvals were being sought for a smaller version, the public was inaccurately told that building deeper underground was not possible.

Indeed, South Court has a lot of space that was squeezed in by adding it underground

Contemplation of such a project went back to the 1980s before the SIBL expansion and was undertaken shortly after completion of the SIBL expansion and the renovation of the Rose Reading Room.  In 1998 it was originally envisioned as a smaller expansion of 28,400 square feet of space that would have cost considerably less, only $10 million, to build and another $5 million to equip.   In September of 2000 when construction was underway it was estimated that the cost of the project would be significantly less than it turned out to be: $22.5 million vs. the final $29 million.

On the south side of the 42nd Street Central Reference Library, the arch leading into the South Court where horse-drawn carriages once entered

The courtyard was open and viewable from the street through an arch that used to admit horse-drawn carriages and was used for loading and unloading.  The space had been used to an extent in other ways: “A trellis-covered bungalow” was added in 1919 as a “rest and luncheon room” for employees.”  And there was a “shed” in it used by exhibition staff.  (See: For Public Library, New Building Within the Old One,
By Edwin McDowell, September 17, 2000 and Metropolis Magazine December 1969 / Taming the NYPL’s LionsTaming the NYPL’s Lions, by Karen Steen.)

In 1998 the Slavic and Baltic Division overlooked the 80 x 80 foot court yard where the 73 by 73 foot expansion was built, leaving 3 1/2 foot clearance all around.

The Slavic and Baltic Division?  Now closed!

From the NYPL, South Court years ago

South Court before constriction of the expansion published in Metropolis Magazine

Said President Le Clerq at the time:

As we renovated public spaces in the building, including moving the copying center from the main reading room, we knew we needed some place for people we were displacing.

Another change since 2002, Metropolis Magazine reporting on the addition and interviewing Le Clerq explained how the Central Reference library stacks could be seen then from the new South Court and referred to those stacks as "sacrosanct": 

South Court even gives patrons a glimpse of the books themselves—through narrow windows that look in on the sacrosanct stacks.

As part of the Central Library Plan the current library administration has envisioned demolishing the "sacrosanct"stacks and decommissioning them from their intended use around which the entire 42nd Street Central Reference Library was designed.

South Court no longer gives patrons a glimpse of the books themselves.  Now you see the empty bookshelves

Glimpse into the now empty research stacks from South Court

Needed more space in 2002?

From 1987 to 1992, the years during which the Bryant Park expansion of the stacks and books was being constructed, the total NYPL central destination Manhattan library space was 763,000 square feet.  That figure includes the main buildings, not the book storage space in the 42nd Street Annex building the NYPL also owned and now no longer owns, additional real estate it has divested itself of.  In 2002 when South Court was completed, the square footage of such NYPL space (again, not counting the purely book storage space like the additional stacks under Bryant Park) was 965,222 square feet with the NYPL planning to go up to 1,082,222 square feet with the planned Mid-Manhattan expansion.

From 1987 to an envisioned 2015 (with an implemented Central Library Plan), total actual midtown Manhattan Library destination space actual and planned, first going up and then going lower than ever before

But now Donnell is gone, the $100 million SIBL which increased space substantially, is being sold off.  The consolidating shrinkage of the Central Library Plan would shrink current space down to just 569,222 square feet, significantly less than the 763,000 figure for the late 80s and early 90s and certainly less than the recently envisioned 1,082,222 square feet.  If the largely underground and bookless replacement for Donnell is completed by 2015 as the NYPL says it currently hopes, that figure would be just a bit larger, 597,222, still below the figures for the space the library had in the 1980 when the city had a population about a million fewer than the slightly over 8 million population in New York City now.
Does any of this make sense except in terms of handing off real library real estate to developers in deals that benefit them, but not the public?  Including what was spent to put stacks under Bryant Park, over $150 million was spent since the end of the 1980s to expand library space.

Yesterday, at the NYPL’s trustees meeting, the trustees were told that the NYPL still envisions going forward with the Central Library Plan, that it is "moving along."  In that regard it was reported to the trustees that the NYPL was having'conversations’ and "working with" with Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio and, in addition, the members of the City Council and the members of the entire new, incoming administration. .  .  "to make sure we are all, as it were, headed in the same direction."  “Working on” these people might have been a better phrase.

It was in the news that Mayor-elect de Blasio was visiting the “talking transition tent” yesterday (the transition tent was set up independent of de Blasio.)  Though it was not reported elsewhere in the news, NYPL president Tony Marx told the trustees that he had been at the talking transition tent when de Blasio was there.  (It was reported that the NYPL was doing what it could to influence public feedback input to the transition tent operation, including linking to the online transition tent survey with its questions about libraries.- Or ideas can be submitted too.)  At about the same time Mayor-elect de Blasio was at the talking transition tent troops from  Citizens Defending Libraries (I'm a cofounder of CDL) were also there handing out flyers urging that city libraries not be sold, shrunk and underfunded as under the Bloomberg administration.  More Citizens Defending Libraries and Committee to Save the New York Public Library troops were outside (and at) the trustees meeting delivering the same message.

Troops gathered at the beginning of a more than two hour protest outside Wednesday's NYPL trustee meeting

Mr. Marx and the rest of those running the NYPL are aware that unless the NYPL can convince Mayor de Blasio and new administration cohorts to spend $150 million taxpayer dollars and allow what might be close to a half billion in public funds in total to be spent on selling and shrinking libraries, the Central Library Plan won’t proceed as planned.  Spend all that public money on shrinking and selling libraries?  Does the NYPL have any reason to be optimistic that they can swing de Blasio on this?  The trustees were told that so far the "conversations" were going "very well" and in the perverse view of the NYPL, "going in a positive direction." - The direction of shrinking way down the recently increased space?

Photo and drawings by Simon Verity

Demonstrators outside 42nd Street Central Reference Library during the November 20th NYPL Trustees meeting- On right, Simon Verity-drawn banner: "Trustees- On Your Watch"

What do the New York Public Library Trustees know about what is going on their watch?  Here’s a most basic question: Do they have any idea of the number of books they are making available to the public, and that the number of books in Manhattan’s most important libraries is significantly shrinking?  The indications are they’re in the dark.

From 1987 to an envisioned 2015 (with an implemented Central Library Plan), how total number of books in Manhattan's principal libraries is declining drastically.  Over 12 million books in 1996 and 2003 to perhaps 4.2 million books (or even far fewer?) when CLP is implemented.  Starting figures in the graph for 1987 and 1992 are graphed lower than than they actually should be because they don't include unknown numbers for Mid-Manhattan and Donnell

I am reliably informed that the minutes for the last ten years of NYPL trustee meetings contain nothing about the number of books in the principal and most important libraries in Manhattan even as deals are being finagled to sell and precipitously shrink those libraries.

From and earlier NNY Article- 1987 to an envisioned 2015 (with an implemented Central Library Plan), total actual midtown Manhattan Library destination space actual and planned, first going up and then going lower than ever before

Maybe I give the trustees too little credit.  Oughtn’t they be able to infer that the number of books available in the libraries would significantly decline when library real estate is sold off and book shelves are kept half full?  See:  Thursday, November 21, 2013, Drastically Reducing Manhattan’s Main Library Space (At City Expense), The NYPL Was Only Just Recently Increasing Its Space (At City Expense), and  Saturday, September 14, 2013, Empty Bookshelves As Library Officials Formulate A New Vision of Libraries: A Vision Where The Real Estate Will Be Sold Off.

Or are they even paying attention to those things?
   
Still, shouldn’t it really work in reverse?  Shouldn’t those overseeing the administration of libraries start with a reckoning of how many books they have and want to make available to the public, with the real estate deals being worked out only afterward?

Exactly how many books have gone missing from Manhattan’s principal libraries without the library trustees paying the matter any note?  A lot. . . . Well over half. . . .  Perhaps two-thirds or more: What may have been thirteen million books or more in total, reduced to perhaps 4.2 million or less.

In April 1996 there were at least twelve million books in Manhattan’s principal libraries: the 42nd Street Central Reference Library, the Mid-Manhattan Library, the Science Industry and Business Library (SIBL) and that doesn’t count the collections and materials that were then in 53rd Street’s Donnell Library, a five-story, 97,000 square foot library across from MoMA.  It is a relatively safe supposition that by 2003 those libraries, including Donnell, contained at least thirteen million books and related items their collection. 

But Donnell has now been sold to be replaced by something that will be relatively bookless and largely underground buried in the bottom of a fifty-story luxury hotel and residential building.  Its collections were sent away (to be included now in these reckonings).  Further, with the Central Library Plan (aka “the 42nd Street Library Renovation”), Mid-Manhattan and SIBL will be sold off entirely, and the research stacks of the 42nd Street Central Reference Library that famously holds most of its books will be largely demolished and decommissioned, no longer fulfilling the stacks original purpose.  The NYPL’s 42nd Street Annex that held additional books nearby has also been sold off by the NYPL.  How many books will the NYPL house when the Central Library plan is effectuated?  The figure of 4.2 million could be a generous estimation, and that number can only be estimated as that high provided that all the book storage that was created to store books under Bryant Park is brought on line.

Bryant Park excavated to add library shelves for more books

Yes, that’s right, for those who did not know, there is book shelf space serving the 42nd Street Central Reference Library under Bryant Park.  We closed Bryant Park for more than four years to create the under-park space.  The park was reopened and some books were moved into it starting in 1992.  The new shelf space was created to hold more than 3.2 million additional books (about 84 miles of books) where they could be more readily accessed by researchers using the Central Reference Library.   Despite original plans, only the top floor of the new facility is presently in use, reportedly holding about 1.8 million books while the bottom floor could hold another 1.4 million.  (See: Saturday, February 9, 2013, Libraries That Are Now Supposedly “Dilapidated” Were Just Renovated: And Are Developers’ Real Estate Deals More Important Than Bryant Park? and Library Starts Road to 84-Mile Shelves Under Park, by Susan Heller Anderson, October 27, 1987.

From an earlier Noticing New York article concerning the building of the under-park shelving

The research stacks of the Central Reference Library around which that celebrated library was built (both conceptually and structurally) hold 3 million books, although the stacks were recently emptied as the NYPL readied them for the demolition to proceed with the Central Library Plan.  In 1987, before the addition of the shelves under Bryant Park, the Central Reference Library held those three million books in the principal stacks plus, in other of its rooms, another 352,000 or more additional books, 88 miles of books in total.  Most of those other books aren’t there now either.

I recently spoke with a film location scout who had visited the Central Reference Library looking for a site to shoot a scene that would have a library room with books in the background.  The NYPL couldn’t oblige him.  He said that administrators explained that, aside from the Rose Reading Room (to which books from the stacks are brought to researchers), they recently had only two other rooms with books in them.  So I guess if you want to remake Ghostbusters or a lot of other good movies from the past in that setting you will have to bring in either the CGI guys or an expensive load of props.  It’s not just the ghosts you will have to be faking.

When the additional space was built for stacks under Bryant Park it was intended that the Central Reference Library would hold 6.2 million research books.  In a pinch it would have been able to hold 6,552,000 books.  But remember these figures are just for books in the Central Reference Library and don’t add in the books for the other nearby central Manhattan libraries.

In 1996 when SIBL was opened there were reportedly 12 million books at the 42nd Street library locations (that’s exclusive of the Donnell books that were just a quick eleven-block walk uptown).  1.2 million books were moved from the Central Reference Library’s reference collection (about 32 miles of books) to SIBL and another 40,000 circulating books were moved there from Mid-Manhattan.  Now the NYPL is selling SIBL (for which we paid $100 million) and has therefore been getting rid of most of those books.

The Central Library Plan proposes that the 42nd Street Central Reference Library books would be reduced to what fits under Bryant Park, just 3.2 million books, fewer than were in the Central Reference Library when in the 1980s we made the sacrifice of closing Bryant Park to expand the library’s capacity.  Further away, these books under Bryant Park would not be as quickly accessible for readers as research books in the originally designed stacks.

How many more books and related items would there be in the library in addition to those reference books?  Some at least because a circulating library to replace both Mid-Manhattan and SIBL would have to have books and materials.  As I noted, 40,000 circulating books were moved from Mid-Manhattan to open SIBL in 1996.  But as the shelves of both these libraries are now startlingly barren and the library seems intent on getting rid of books.  I don’t know that it is fair to assume that the collection of circulating books in the space intended to replace those libraries would even be 80,000 books altogether.  Nevertheless, I have generously estimated that the replacement circulating library might have as many as 100,000 books and have used that figure for the graph.  If you prefer you can imagine a more precipitously falling line.

Whatever number of books kept for circulation purposes they would all have to fit, together with reading and ambulation space for the patrons, into a much smaller amount of space than they came from that would be crammed into and replace what is currently the space of the research stacks.  In the last released Central Library Plan design that meant fitting into 80,000 square feet created by demolishing the stacks.*  The space, 80,000 or whatever, would have to accommodate what had been in the approximately 300,000 square feet of Mid-Manhattan and SIBL combined.

(* Because the research stacks are so efficiently designed with only 7.5 foot ceilings, they effectively constitute, before demolition, about 160,000 square feet in terms of book stack storage space.)

The NYPL has issued public statements to the effect that a new design for the Central Library Plan will keep some of the research stacks, repurposing them for circulation use.  Perhaps the new design will also slightly increase the overall square footage as well but it will no doubt be exceedingly challenging and, in the end, insufficient.

I contacted the spokesperson for the NYPL to ask about the absence in the minutes of information for the trustees about the declining number of books.  My inquiry was as follows:

In recent years, there has been a terrific downsizing of the number of books and materials available at the major library sites in Manhattan, the 42 Street Central Reference Library, Donnell, Mid-Manhattan, SIBL, the Annex.  It is my understanding that the minutes for the NYPL trustee meetings contain essentially no information about the level of book storage and the numbers of materials and books in these various places.  (Please correct me if you think I am wrong, citing the information you think the minutes do contain that give information over the years about how many books and materials are being kept at these libraries.)

Would you please address for me why the trustees are being asked to oversee major changes in the availability of library assets, together with significant accompanying physical changes to these libraries, without such information being a matter of review at these meetings?  Or, if it is your understanding that these facts were subjects of the trustees’ review as the facts were changing over the years, can you please explain why such facts central to the status and administration of the libraries would not have been included in the minutes afterward?

The response I got was that because Citizens Defending Libraries (a group of which I am a co-founder) is a plaintiff in lawsuit against the NYPL he could not, as the NYPL spokesperson, provide a response.  The good news is that there is this lawsuit to which he referred and another that have thus far impeded the Central Library Plan’s planned demolition, thereby also its consolidating shrinkage banishing books.

No matter that the lawsuit was given as a reason for the NYPL not to respond to my question, it is my understanding that the NYPL is not responding to other news media putting such questions to them irrespective of any lawsuits or the absence thereof.  Not only should the NYPL trustees have been informed with specificity about the number of books that are being kept and the number of books that are being banished, the fact of the matter is that the public should be similarly informed.  The public pays for the libraries and is being asked to foot the bill for the consolidating shrinkage of the Central Library Plan which, it turns out, can only be accomplished at huge cost.

The idea that our New York City libraries needn’t have books is not isolated to Manhattan or the NYPL.  It is being exported to Brooklyn, affecting libraries run by the Brooklyn Public Library.  The other day a neighbor of ours stopped by the Brooklyn Heights Library with her daughter.  The Brooklyn Heights Library is the biggest, most important library in Brooklyn, second only to the what is officially the main library at Grand Army Plaza.  It is a main library comparable to Manhattan’s Donnell, Mid-Manhattan or SIBL and, because of its accessible location, the Brooklyn Heights library is perhaps even more important than the main library at Grand Army Plaza.

Crowd assembling for entry to Brooklyn Heights Libary on a wintery morning earlier this year

Our neighbor and her daughter wanted to look at books about art history.  They were stunned to find out the library had only one book available.  The librarian there offered that if they knew what they wanted he could likely order up books that they specified and have them there in perhaps a day or so.  That’s not what they wanted.  They wanted to see books immediately.  They had come to the library because what they wanted to do they needed to do that night.  And they also wanted to browse.  They didn’t know ahead of time exactly what they might want see.  That’s why they wanted to look and to discover what interested them by looking at a lot of books and surveying the options.
                       
The NYPL is similarly inclined to think that having books elsewhere than at the libraries is satisfactory.   The NYPL is participating on a coordinated basis with the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) in the very same central processing and storage “Book-Ops” approach (handled out of Long Island City, Queens) that means that books won’t be readily found at the system branches and will have to be ordered.  That’s the approach that resulted in there being no art history books to be found at the Brooklyn Heights Library.  And the NYPL believes it is quite sufficient if Central Reference Library books (any that they haven’t, in fact, gotten rid of entirely) can, upon identification, be ordered and arrive in a number of days from Princeton in southern New Jersey.

Trustee Luis A. Ubiñas left praised Trustee and Vice Chair Annette de la Renta right, for . . .?

Respecting the trustees being in the dark about the rapid disappearance of books from the library, it may be worse than you think.  Rather than the trustees receiving no information, no numerical figures about how many books are no longer in the library; they may actually be receiving and dealing in misinformation.

At the last NYPL trustees meeting, held November 20th, two trustees were being singled out for special recognition.  One of them was Vice-Chairman Annette de la Renta (wife of Oscar de la Renta).  Trustee Luis A. Ubiñas was one of those who took the lead in praising Ms. de la Renta.  He did so in terms of praising what was happening in the NYPL system generally.

What did he say?  He said that:

 . . . those libraries have more books in them, in this era when books are evidently vanishing, than they have ever had before.

Really?  What universe is he talking about?  Did he express this in terms of any figures he supplied?  No.  Did he, in fact, have any idea of what he was talking about?  Did Ms. de la Renta as she was being so praised know whether there was any truth in what she was being praised for?  Did she know relevant numbers?  Did she know, for instance, if the number of books in the big central libraries in Manhattan was around 13 million in 2003?  That it is now dramatically down from that number?  That it was headed to maybe 4.2 million or perhaps less with the implementation of the Central Library Plan over which she was presiding?

What do you think?  It's rather awful if she didn't know.  Still what is worse: Presiding over such a profound diminishment in the number of these libraries books not knowing these numbers. . . . or knowing the numbers?

Tall new towers in Brooklyn Heights to replace the Brooklyn Heights Library?  The image of the two towers above are of buildings whose potential height speculatively ranges, Photoshopped to show their tallest announced possible version for which an image isn't available.  Maybe not what they will look like, but for other reasons they may be even taller- read on.

The Brooklyn Heights Association and the Brooklyn Public Library were once upon a time suggesting that Noticing New York was being `alarmist' when in February a Noticing New York article suggested that the building that might go up to replace the Brooklyn Heights Library could be very tall, as much as 40 stories.  The article informed readers that my information was that a possible 40-story building was what the BPL was discussing internally (“I have been informed that, off the record, he [BPL spokesperson Josh Nachowitz] has told others in internal discussion the building could be forty stories plus parking below”).  (See: Sunday, February 3, 2013, What Could We Expect Forest City Ratner Would Do With Two Library Sites On Sale For The Sake Of Creating Real Estate Deals?)

Alarmist?  Really?  On Thursday evening (December 12th) the BPL finally released proposals (in a summary briefing form) that were all submitted to it back in September on the 20th.  One of the seven proposals, Proposal F, says that proposal’s particular building could be as tall as a 55-story height (and at least a 45-story height).  The rendering the BPL has put out to the public of that building is apparently just the 45-story height version of what the developer might build.

Heights of the Buildings in the Proposals- Currently

In fact, most of the proposals think in terms of building fairly tall buildings.  Proposal B projects building up to a 47-story height (370 to 470 feet).  Proposal C up to a 40-story building height (400 feet).   Proposal E up to a 35-story building height (359 feet). Proposal C up to a 31-story building height (319 feet).  Proposal G up to a 29-story building height (290 feet). Proposal A up to a 28-story building height (285 feet).

I am being careful in my wording here.  I am not saying these buildings would actually be that many stories, only that they would be the height of buildings that are many stories tall.  The general convention in real estate is to estimate one floor for every ten feet of building height.  When I asked during the presentation whether the BPL could be viewed as trustworthy after having tried to discredit as `alarmist’ my previous projection of a tall building being built on the site, citing a likely forty stories or perhaps an even taller building, BPL spokesperson Josh Nachowitz pointed out that building height is not guaranteed to translate into an exact number of stories and that sometimes, as with buildings that have taller ceilings, there may be fewer floors in such taller buildings.  He said that in order not to deceive the public about the actual heights the BPL had furnished only the heights of the buildings.  (In other words, the BPL was not telling the public how many stories these buildings would be.)

Not Ratner- And Not as Tall as Possible

Mr. Nachowtize said the BPL is also choosing at this time not to tell the public who the developers of the seven proposals are, or how much they have offered to pay for the site, this despite the fact that public present for the presentation of the proposals was urging that this information be disclosed.  The Wall Street Journal, however, reported that Forest City Ratner did not submit a proposal and the same information was given by “a library insider” to Brooklyn Eagle and was given by“a source” to the Daily News, by Nachowtiz to DNAinfo.  Nachowitz told the Brooklyn Paper that “a controversial company with the initials `F.C.’ was not involved.”  None of this `not Ratner’ information means that Forest City Ratner won’t benefit if the property is sold and developed.  See: Friday, September 20, 2013, Forest City Ratner As The Development Gatekeeper (And Profit taker) Getting The Benefit As Brooklyn Heights Public Library Is Sold.

Notably, according to the information furnished by the BPL at the presentation, none of the seven proposals currently released and depicted in the rendering even use all of the development rights that are available.  That means all of them could grow in the course of subsequent negotiations!

How the Tall Buildings Proposed Could Grow Taller

When I asked about the zoning calculation and what development rights were coming in from other neighboring parcels I was told that none of the proposals involved development rights coming in from Forest City Ratner.  When I pressed about whether other development rights were being transferred in and specifically mentioned the possibility of development rights being transferred in form the Saint Ann's School through an expansion of the larger merged zoning lot involving Forest City Ratner, Mr. Nachowitz acknowledged that one of the seven proposals contemplated “a relationship” with Saint Ann's to utilize those Saint Ann's development rights.  Mr. Nachowitz said that Forest City Ratner would not be involved in what it would take to bring in those development rights, but that does not seem possible since any conventional approach would dictate that the rights would necessarily pass through a merging with the zoning lot of which Forest City Ratner is part to effect the transaction.

The entire block, Ratner Property highlighted, showing what, with Ratner cooperation, could be treated as a single merged zoning lot to transfer development rights from Saint Ann's School to the library site

Above, Saint Ann School building with development rights that are not yet utilized.  Ratner property is in the background, literally (and metaphorically?)

Based on what Mr. Nachowitz said, Saint Ann's School is demonstrably willing to convey its extra development rights to the library parcel.   But only one of the seven proposals currently reflects such utilization of those rights?  That means that if any of the other six proposals is selected we can expect that ultimately it will result in a larger building when in the course of subsequent negotiations those Saint Ann's development rights are transferred in to be utilized.  Why would that happen?  The developer would point out that the larger development was as-of-right (a zoning matter not requiring a special approval), perhaps offer some nominal sweetener, and others would probably be arguing that the school should be allowed to profit by transferring the rights out.

In addition to the Saint Ann's development rights, in 1986 the city gave Forest City Ratner development rights from the library site (more than half the development rights unless possible zoning bonuses are considered) which is one reason the public has less to gain by selling this library.  In previous public meetings the BPL has confirmed that Forest City Ratner still holds some of these development rights unused.  This means that these rights too could be transferred back to the library site (Forest City Ratner presumably being paid for them).  This is likely to happen since, in terms of what needs to happen to make it so, it would be part of virtually the very same merged zoning lot transaction necessary to transfer in the rights from Saint Ann's School.

And that means?  As Mr. Nachowtiz said that none of the seven proposals currently reflect a transfer in of the Forest City Ratner development rights, it means that all seven of the proposals could grow to involve still larger buildings.

Depicting Taller Possible Buildings (But Not The Tallest Possible Buildings)

Released by the BPL- 37 Stories?

As is, it appears that the Brooklyn Public Library (or the developers), not wanting to be alarmist about the size of the as yet still smaller buildings currently proposed, have submitted renderings of the smaller possible versions of the buildings proposed.  As noted, Proposal B projects a building that could range from perhaps 370 feet (a 37-story height) to perhaps 470 feet (a 47-story height).  The rendering supplied (above) appears to depict a 370 foot, approximately 37-story tall, building, not the taller height now cited as possible.  What might an extra hundred feet, ten extra stories look like?   See the rendering below that was achieved with some Photoshopped adjustments.

Photoshopped.  47 stories?

The real estate blog Curbed and other sites got access to a rendering that BPL is not releasing to the public as part of its website release of proposal information.  Below, using that rendering, is what the taller building would look like in the wider landscape view you can see at the Curbed site: Possible Library-Replacing Towers Revealed For BK Heights, Friday, December 13, 2013, by Jessica Dailey- Comments possible.  (The Curbed site has the most renderings if you care to go there.)

Landscape version released by BPL

If the building reaches taller proposed height

Similarly, the tallest building of Proposal F, which may be anywhere from 455 feet to 551 feet tall, looks like it has been rendered at the lower 455 foot height.  Counting what are evidently the stories in the rendering this probably 455 foot building appears to be 35 stories tall.  In other words that would make Josh Nachowitz correct in this instance: An average height of 13 feet a floor would reflect a marketing decision to aim at the super-luxury condo market.  Such high ceilings would also help boost the building's higher-floor apartments up for harbor views.  If this released rendering was of the 551 foot version of the building we would be talking about an average floor height of 15.7 feet.  That’s unlikely the case.

Version released by the BPL

What would a taller version of the building look like if it had 96 more feet and another seven floors?  See below.

Taller version?

What would it look like if it remained a 35-floor building but had those even more luxurious tall 15.7 foot floors?  See below.  It’s the same thing, just a little more stretched up.

Taller by virtue of super-high ceiling heights

Will this super-luxury building be one of the buildings that people actually live in?  If it isn’t, if it instead turns out to be one of the buildings where the wealthy invest in rarely used residences, it will not serve to achieve the that oft aspired-to goal of transit-oriented development that people cite to justify taller buildings.

Do the Photoshopped versions of these renderings show what these buildings will actually look like if they wind up being the taller versions of their predicted selves?  It isn’t actually that easy to guess how the massing and bulk of these buildings will be rearranged if and when the taller predicted heights are achieved, but what it is important to note is that neither of these Photoshopped renderings, nor any of the other renderings currently up on BPL site show any of the buildings as tall as they might be if all of the unused development rights, those from the Saint Anne's School and those from Forest City Ratner, are transferred in to build taller. 

Donnell Redux- Shrinking Libraries

Of course, not everybody reacts negatively to tall buildings, even those teetering up to throw shadows on historic Brooklyn Heights, as bad things.  For many the much greater concern is the way that the libraries are shrinking as buildings such as these buildings grow.  The greater concern is how the provision of a library seems to be offered as a nominal and perfunctory effort at public pacification without earnest thought about a library’s real functions.

Proposal C's Donnell mimicking descending stair-step "flexible" space

During the presentation on Thursday night the audience in attendance gasped in instant recognition of how one of the proposed designs for the new Brooklyn Heights Library (Proposal C*) featuring a descending stair-step space mimicking the infamous design for the much castigated shrinkage of the Donnell Library.

(* In Curbed the image is identified as being from Proposal E, which unless the BPL's summary brief is wrong will require correction and screw up the comments on Curb's site.)

Library?- The stair-step "flexible" space design to 'replace' Donnell

The Donnell Library was an important flagship destination library across from MoMA on 53rd Street in Manhattan, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.  The old Donnell was 97,000 square feet.  The proposed new Donnell design was created to deal with the problem of how to disguise the fact that the library’s disappointing replacement is far too small and largely underground, hardly large enough to hold any books,* while also addressing a few of the significant community functions the old Donnell once provided with its recently renovated auditorium, state of the art media center, and Teen Center.

(* The design looks like it was copied from a Japanese design the architects stumbled across when Googling up the phrase “bookless library”:  Friday, November 1, 2013, Inspiration For The Non-Library: The Genesis Of The Design For The Space That Won’t Be Able To Replace The Donnell Library.)

Bookless Japanese library as inspiration for Donnell? From A AS Architecture

The new Donnell will be shrunk down to only 28,000 square feet, less than a third of the library’s former size.  The Brooklyn Heights Library, like Donnell, has long been a flagship destination library, supremely accessible to all of Brooklyn and most New Yorkers in its Downtown Central Business District transit hub location, sitting over most of the city’s most important subway lines and a slew of bus routes spoking out to all of Brooklyn.  The Request For Proposals that the Brooklyn Public Library sent out specified for the Heights Library to be shrunk to just 20,000 square feet, a size even smaller (hardly two-thirds) than the size of the now unsatisfactorily small Donnell.  As with Donnell, the reconstruction of this Brooklyn library will involve shifting library space underground: The BPL specified that up to 5,000 feet of the new library can be put underground.

BPL’s Lack of Desire For a Larger Library

Although I oppose the sale and shrinkage of the Brooklyn Heights Library, especially given the current real estate deal-oriented mindset of the BPL and Bloomberg administration officials, I offered kudos to the developers who proposed a larger library, 31,192 square feet (Proposal A) and 30,000 square feet (Proposal E), than the BPL specified. . .  particularly since the City Economic Development Corporation (EDC) and BPL in issuing the RFP had not offered extra credit for more library space or for putting more of the library space above ground.  Josh Nachowtiz countered that rather than not giving credit for doing more for the public in this regard the BPL’s position was more `nuanced.’

What EDC and the BPL furnished developers informing them about what it desired in terms of the proposals it was seeking indicated several objectives: The goal of maximizing the price rose to the top, appearing foremost among them.  It is, of course, difficult to meet the objective of offering a maximized price if additional space gets devoted to the library.

The RFP itself did not mention the possibility of giving extra credit for a larger library or for more above-ground library space.  In fact, it did not even mention the possibility of a larger library.  The selection criteria stated “maximizing sale proceeds” as a first objective (see below).  While it said that “adequacy” of addressing library requirements was part of the selection criteria it referred to an “Appendix A” description of those requirements that set forth a flat-out specification that a new library be 20,000 square feet and that at least 15,000 square feet of that be on the ground floor.

RFP "Selection Criteria"

Appendix A- Library specifications

Thrown in was EDC's somewhat vague boilerplate about “economic impact to the city” being one of the selection criteria.  It could be argued that this language could justify a provision of a larger library given the economic benefits of libraries, but it is a bit far-fetched to conclude that this is what EDC and BPL officials were thinking when that language was included.

I didn’t take a picture of the PowerPoint slide used at the July 17, 2013 developer information session I attended that would document what I recall about how maximization of price was emphasized, but here is what the developers in attendance were told orally about the project’s goals:

So I am just going to recapitulate what Josh [Nachowitz] sort of already mentioned.  I want to just stress that this is going to be a very competitive process and we had an earlier information session that was also full.  We want to just stress that we are looking for a few things that we really need addressed.:

        •    One is to maximize the sales price.  Those sales price will be used to build a new library and to be used in much needed capital repairs all over the Brooklyn’s portfolio, Brooklyn Library’s portfolio- So we need to maximize the sales price.*

[* Despite this rhetoric, there is no way to assure any actual such dollar-for-dollar linkage between the selling of libraries, their sales prices, and the funding of capital repairs in the library system.  We will return to this subject later.] 

        •    In addition we need to make sure that we have the new library delivered back to the city efficiently, expediently, and with quality building.  So if any successful proposal demonstrates that it is able to maximize profits to the city and deliver a new library quickly and have excellent quality, excellent design.

        •    We will obviously be looking at the development team qualifications as we always do in RFPs.  We're going to be looking to financial feasibility very carefully.  So please make sure you have a robust pro forma that’s in Excel format that we can look at.

        •    And also please be cognizant of the relationships with the surrounding community.  Whilst this is not in an Historic District, it is surrounded by an Historic District and we want the design to be aware of that, and cognizant of that.  And that goes for the design plan as well.

So, based on the above, after maximizing price, a relatively high priority is a design that won’t be jarring and upsetting for those living in the Brooklyn Heights Historic District, but there is no priority for a larger library.

Below is the way that the BPL’s `nuanced’ position on extra space was stated in the Questions and Answers the BPL posted for developers on its web site.

    Q. Will there be additional credit toward the purchase price if additional library space is provided?

    A. The required square footage of the new library is specified in Appendix A of the RFP. Proposals that adhere to the requirements, as specified, are preferred, although proposals that contemplate additional library space are not precluded and a credit towards the purchase price in this instance may be considered. As stated in the RFP, one of BPL’s primary development goals is to maximize proceeds needed to generate capital funds for this and other BPL libraries. 

“Proposals that contemplate additional library space are not precluded” and “a credit towards the purchase price in this instance may be considered,”but the “primary development goals is to maximize proceeds” as already stated (emphasis supplied).  What would be your takeaway as a developer?  Does sales price still trump no matter what?

The above Question and Answer might never have been furnished to developers had I not asked a question to raise the issue at the developer information session.  The above ‘nuanced’ statement of position is apparently a refinement of the following exchange at that meeting that began with my question:

    MDDW:  You are getting credit both for the purchase price and for what you are doing for the benefit of the libraries. .  So up to 5,000 feet can be underground.   Do you get additional credit for having less than 5,000 feet, . .  more feet overground, and do you get additional credit for having more than 20,000 square feet for the library, or does that work against you?

    Josh Nachowitz:So as we’ve said before for the number one, number two and number three development goals for the project is to build the best library that we can for BPL. We’ve set out that no more than 5,000 square feet of the proposed library space can be below grade, so, yes, if there is a proposal that put all 20,000 square feet above grade, or a proposal that put in a library larger than that . . [pause]

    Interjection, by EDC representative:We would weigh that up against the . .

    Nachowitz:. . Sales price.

    EDC representative:. . . Sales price.

Developers Never Reached Out To Confer With Community

So how much of a priority were the needs and desires library users as the developers formulated the plans for these tall new luxury towers?  At the presentation of the designs I asked Mr. Nachowitz whether the developers were at liberty to approach the community and library users to discover their needs and desires as they formulated these designs.  Mr. Nachowitz said that the developers were previously permitted to approach the community for such purpose before submitting their designs, but that going forward from this point they would not be allowed to do so.

If it’s true that all the seven developers who submitted proposals (and any other developers who may have been exploring the possibility of submitting a response) were permitted to approach the community for feedback, none of them did.

The BPL is taking comments from the public now, but not in a way that everyone will immediately see those comments on their web page when they are submitted.

To Replace Large Amounts of Library Space, “Flexible” Library Space Good For Many Thing Except Quiet Reading of Books

The Proposal E design that mimics the Donnell design is one of the five proposals presenting a library of only 20,000 square feet.  BPL officials present trumpeted their ability to make do with such a small amount of library space, explaining that this was because it is “flexible” space.  (For more musings on the concept of flexibility see: Thursday, April 25, 2013, Building a “Murphy Library”.)

To NYPL President Tony Marx, an “agora” and a “piazza” where the bleacher/stairs can be used to show people David Niven movies in the daylight while chamber music is played.

This is the same concept the NYPL has been touting as a excuse to rationalize why it is selling off and shrinking library space elsewhere in the city.  NYPL president Anthony Marx referred to the bleacher/stairs of the Donnell design as flexibly serving both an “agora” and a “piazza.” And at the same time it works functionally as stairs and is supposed to serve as seating to show movies while daylight streams in the window.  See: Friday, May 24, 2013, Previews Of The Proposed New Donnell Library: The NYPL Unveils Its Version Of The “Silk Purse” Libraries It Envisions For Our Future.

How long is the list of  ways that library officials claim such smaller spaces work well?  One thing such newly conceived of flexible space does not seem to do well is provide a quiet space in which to read books . . .

. .  At almost the same time that the BPL was unveiling these designs the NYPL’s  PR generated an article in the New York Times that dubiously celebrated the opening of one of these new-concept, `flexible’ libraries in Staten Island’s Mariners Harbor.  Here is an extract from the Times describing how the flexible space works:

Except for a conference room and staff offices, the 10,000-square-foot space is entirely open, with no partitions higher than the 3-foot-6-inch bookshelves that help demarcate the children’s, teen and adult areas.

If that sounds noisy to you, so be it. “We encourage noise,” said Elizabete Pata, the library manager. “I’m not the typical librarian, shushing people.”

“We’re not going to be a traditional library,” she said. “This is going to be more like a community center.”

  Tranquility may be found just out the back door, however.

(See: Building Blocks: An Oyster, Filled With Books, Is Set to Open on Staten Island- Mariners Harbor Library to Open on Monday, by David W. Dunlap, December 11, 2013.)

Arguably, the NYPL has succeeded in creating a flexible space accommodating multiple functions, just not a quiet place to read a book.  So much for the flagship destination well-equipped reading and research library the Brooklyn Heights Library has traditionally been!

Books as Conceptual Afterthoughts

-

New style (Donnell-inspired?) bookshelves- Concept being preeminent- Do you use a trampoline or climbing gear to get to the top shelf?  Proposal F

The fact that books tend to be just a conceptual afterthought is emphasized by this slide from Proposal F which, echoing the designs unrealistically offered for Donnell, shows unusable `conceptual’ bookshelves many times the height regulations would permit or that people without climbing and safety gear could access.

Similar overly tall books shelves in the Donnell design renderings showing that having books in a library is a conceptual thing

Unreceptive Public

The crowd the night of the presentation for the Brooklyn Library replacement plans was not exactly receptive.  The Brooklyn Eagle noted:

It was rough sledding Thursday night for Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) officials as they presented seven proposals to re-develop the Brooklyn Heights Branch Library.

Even before Josh Nachowitz, BPL’s VP of Government and Community Relations and Richard Reyes-Gavilan, BPL’s Chief Librarian ran through a Powerpoint with project renderings and details, opponents peppered them with catcalls and angry comments.

“These plans are covering up the slumlord aspect of what the Library did to this building,” audience member Marsha Rimler called out.

“Why won’t you reveal the developers’ names?” others shouted.

Opponents say the city is selling off public assets like libraries for the benefit of private developers, and that “the fix is in.”

(See: BPL unveils seven proposals for redeveloped Brooklyn Heights Library- Unruly crowd challenges library officials at Thursday presentation, by Mary Frost, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 13, 2013.  Comments Possible)

DNAinfo New York reported similarly:

Many residents have spoken out against selling the library to private developers, and they continued to voice their concerns Thursday.

"You speak of this as if it were already a done deal. We don’t want that at all," said resident Marilyn Berkon. "Why is it that we cannot simply refurbish what we already have? What this really is, is a business deal to make rich people richer."

(See: Brooklyn Heights Library Designs Revealed, by Janet Upadhye on December 13, 2013- Comments Possible)

The crowd attending that evening might be excused from having anticipated in advance that they weren’t going to like the plans which had the BPL had withheld* for nearly three months before unveiling. The mindset of those now selling New York City libraries isn’t trusted.  Ostensibly, the BPL and city officials have the interest of the library using public in mind, but the actual enthusiasm for these plans is coming mostly from people like the readers of the real estate blog Curbed nakedly disdaining libraries with comments like: “Why not tear down all the libraries. Most Americans don't read anymore.” and “What is a `library’?”.  

(* “Kept them secret,” in the words of the Brooklyn Paper. See: Library bookmarks Brooklyn Heights branch plans, by Jaime Lutz, The Brooklyn Paper, December 13, 2013.  Comments Possible)

BPL Insists Its Process Has Integrity- But Greatly Exaggerates Public Participation?

Most of the articles reporting on the proposal presentations included various protestations on the BPL’s behalf about the integrity and suitability of the process by which the proposals had been developed.  The Brooklyn Eagle included this:

“Any accusation that the process is rigged is completely and totally inaccurate,” Nachowitz said. He noted more than 40 hours of public meetings to date, and the process is still in the early stage. “If the fix was in we wouldn’t be here tonight.”

The “public meetings” to which Mr. Nachowtiz referred were probably the “Community Advisory Committee” meetings of which the meeting the evening of the presentations was technically the 7th.    The first of those meetings had been in February and from the very start, the committee meetings were suspiciously structured around the core support or condoning for the sale and shrinkage of the library from the Friends of the Brooklyn Heights Branch Library and the Brooklyn Heights Association.  (See: Saturday, April 13, 2013, Condoning The Sale and Shrinkage Of The Brooklyn Heights Library, Does The Brooklyn Heights Associations Think Of Friends Group As A Fig Leaf? It Should Think Again.)

Altogether, the previous six of those meetings to which Mr. Nachowitz might have been referring totaled less than seven and one half hours.  How Mr. Nachowitz may have gotten from under seven and a half hours to his tally of “40 hours of public meetings to date” is uncertain.  He probably included the January meeting of the Friends group where the plan to sell the library was first unveiled and also included his presentation before Brooklyn Community Board 2.  There was a presentation to a local political club about the Brooklyn Heights Library and the Pacific Branch after which the club passed a resolution strongly opposing the sales.  Was Mr. Nachowitz also including the few public meetings that were held with respect to the proposed sale of the Pacific Branch?  Including BPL trustee meetings?  Even so, it seems impossible that he could get to a 40 hour tally even if he included the full day of state hearings on all the library sales held by Assemblyman Micah Kellner or included the shorter hearings on all the library sales held by the City Council committee overseeing libraries.

Trust For BPL Narrative?  Betting On An MOU?

One attendee at the meeting, neighborhood resident Quinn Raymond, credulously bought into and reiterated key aspects of the BPL’s script.  According to the Brooklyn Eagle:

Some members of the audience offered constructive criticism. Resident Quinn Raymond, who said his wife was a frequent user of the library, offered “general support with a lot of caveats.”

“We need a new library,” he said. “A tremendous amount of capital infrastructure needs repairs, but there’s no budget. This would fund library projects in other neighborhoods.”

According to DNAinfo

"What I like about this plan is that it gives us a better library — we do need a new library in fact," resident Quinn Raymond said. "And people in Bushwick and Canarsie and Fort Greene, they also need new libraries and the truth is there's no other revenue for that."

Even if such a very significantly smaller library could be considered a “better library” the narrative into which Mr. Quinn has bought has several flaws.  I told Mr. Quinn after the meeting that a generation of children were likely to grow up without benefit of a proper library as a result of this plan- even now they were deprived as the library was emptied of books as a precursor to the intended sales.  (One woman at the meeting described visiting the library to discover it had virtually no art books on its denuded shelves.)  More important, the numbers should not be believed when city and BPL officials say there is no budget for repairs and when they offer the estimates for those repairs.  Furthermore, there is absolutely no way to assure that proceeds of any library sales would be spent on such repairs as the library system shrank.

Empty shelves- Children's Library

As the Daily News reported:

. .  the project has riled neighborhood activists.

They contend that library officials are lying about how much it would cost to repair the dilapidated branch.

    * * *

“Brooklyn Public Library is using the pretext of a broken air-conditioning system and significantly inflating the estimated cost of its repair as a reason to sell a publicly owned library building for private development and private benefit,” said a press release issued by Citizens Defending Libraries,* a group opposed to the sale.

Library officials maintain they have been open and honest about the needed repairs and project, noting that they have held 45 hours of community meetings.

[* I am a cofounder of Citizens Defending Libraries and a proponent of its petition opposing the sale of New York City libraries]

(See: Brooklyn Public Library unveils seven proposals for Brooklyn Heights branch
In February, library officials announced plans to sell the city-owned branch at 280 Cadman Plaza West in Brooklyn Heights to a private developer who will erect an apartment tower with a new, 20,000 square foot branch on the bottom floor.  By Reuven Blau / New York Daily News
Thursday, December 12, 2013.)

Now (above) the BPL has escalated, citing “45 hours of community meetings” to prove that they have been “open and honest”?  But if the BPL can’t get the math right about the number of hours of public meetings there have been (or even whether it is 40 or 45 hours) why should we trust their math on the repairs?

The Brooklyn Eagle quoted me to address the other issue of whether sale proceeds would go to library repairs:

Michael White, author of the Noticing New York blog asserted that the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed with the city specifying that money raised by the sale would go to BPL (as opposed to the city’s general fund) “is not enforceable.”

Originally, when the public was first informed about the idea of using an MOU to specify that the City would return the proceeds it received from the sale of the library for library expenditures the idea was that it would be enforceable.  But at the May 23rd Community Advisory Committee meeting when the MOU was unveiled representatives of elected officials expressed dismay and consternation that the agreement made little pretense of being truly enforceable or otherwise being effective in ensuring that the BPL would actually garner proceeds from a library sale.  In response, BPL spokesman Josh Nachowitz dismissed the importance of the ineffectiveness of the MOU, saying that some MOUs get honored and some don't (they just ‘get thrown out’) and suggested that with an upcoming change of many elected officials throughout the city it didn’t make sense to want it to be enforceable.

Previously, Mr. Nachowitz had spoken of a plan to execute a contract with a developer before December 31, 2013, the last day of Mayor Bloomberg’s term.  It is under the Bloomberg administration that all the library sales for shrinkage, starting with Donnell in 2007 (with Bloomberg blessing), have been pursued.  As quoted in the Brooklyn Eagle Mr. Nachowitz offered that the  idea was now to wait for the new de Blasio administration to come in and get from it the equivalent of a moral promise to send the sales proceeds in the direction of the library:

“We’ll be having conversations with the new budget director,” Nachowitz said. “We’ll make sure the MOU is honored. If the MOU is not honored by the new administration, the board of the Library will not enter into the transaction.”

Nachowitz also said that a “reversion clause” would allow the city to “recapture” the real estate if the developer failed to build out according to the time line.

But the problem is not just whether the new administration exercises its legal right to ignore the MOU.  As I pointed out at the meeting, just because some funds are sent over identified as being from the proceeds of a sale that doesn’t mean that libraries will in the end get more overall funding because the city can still simply budget fewer funds.  It is, I said, just the same way that saying that funds from legalized gambling will go to schools (as often promised) doesn’t mean that education ultimately actually receives more money.  The agreements are more typically breached than honored.

Mr. Nachowitz’s idea of “reversion clause” as safeguarding protection if things aren’t working out?: What if that concept were extended to say that the library site property would revert to public ownership if the Brooklyn libraries were not actually receiving the influx of cash that supposedly justifies the sale?  No developer would sign such a deal because no developer would assume the risk that the library-using public is now being asked to assume.

The Delay (Until the de Blasio Administration?) In Signing A Developer

The BPL now says that it envisions executing a contract with a developer in “the first quarter of 2014”  (Brooklyn Eagle) “first three months of 2014" (Brooklyn Paper).  Does waiting to execute a contract facilitate pushing through the sale: Will there now be seven developers (plus Forest City Ratner) each ready to lobby the new Mayor de Blasio in expectation that they might benefit if the deal goes through?  Another question is this: Will the RFP be consummated with a signing under the de Blasio administration or go into the limbo of an interrupted process?  Because there are those who would want to argue that a signing after the January first date of the de Blasio administration commences would morally commit Mr. de Blasio to go forward in some way notwithstanding that on July 12, 2014 Mr. de Blasio stood with Citizens Defending Libraries and others on the steps of the 42nd Street Central Reference Library to oppose the city’s library sales, this one included.  That argument of incipient obligation would also have to be despite that fact that required public reviews of this sale, including ULURP (Uniform Land Use Review Procedure) have not actually commenced.

Mayoral candidate de Blasio with Citizens Defending Libraries at 42nd Street library in July

On the Cusp of a New Administration Bloomberg Fails to Lock in Library Deals

Up until recently, the Bloomberg administration had the sale of New York City libraries on a faster tack.  As noted the developer contract for the Brooklyn Heights Library was supposed to be executed before the end of Bloomberg’s term.  It may be viewed as part and parcel of all the sell-offs and real estate deals pushed by the Bloomberg administration at the end of its term.  See the front page story of today’s New York Times:  Going Out With Building Boom, Mayor Pushes Billions in Projects, by Charles V. Bagli, December 15, 2013- Comments possible.   See also, The Brian Lehrer Show (Charles Bagli guest), Rushed Development Deals, Wednesday, November 27, 2013 (audio below),
and Atlantic Yards Report, Thursday, November 28, 2013, Wrongheaded on Brian Lehrer: guest suggests de Blasio might be courageous in supporting Atlantic Yards, host suggests mayor will "pressure" developer.



According to that Times article:

The Bloomberg administration has been pushing through more than $12 billion worth of real estate projects in its waning days. .  before Bill de Blasio takes over Jan. 1.

    * * *

The projects, which will begin construction well after Mayor-elect de Blasio takes office in January, also bind the new mayor to the old mayor’s agenda, at least for a while. By Dec. 31, some projects . .  will have reached the point that they cannot be stopped or modified.

The Times article described Bloomberg’s great success in this regard. . . and, in doing so, inaccurately, overstated it:

Only one so-called legacy project — the rezoning of 73 blocks surrounding Grand Central Terminal for taller towers — failed, when the Bloomberg administration could not win the Council’s support last month.

The above is in accurate because the Bloomberg administration also failed to lock in, the way it wanted to, the sales of New York City libraries.  Not only did the Bloomberg administration not succeed in signing the development agreement for the the Brooklyn Heights Library as planned, the NYPL’s Central Library Plan is halted and will not proceed unless Mayor de Blasio and other newly elected officials like Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and the new City Council decide to back funding for it.  Right now, there is no public or approved design for the Central Library Plan.  When there finally is an approved public plan, public officials will have to decide whether to approve and put into next year’s city budget the spending of $150 million in taxpayer money and the diversion of massive amount of other public money, (perhaps almost a half billion total when all is said and done) from other library purposes in order to sell off and drastically shrink libraries and exile a huge amount of books from Manhattan’s flagship destination libraries.

Below is a slide with information from Bloomberg’s website that noted that achieving the consolidating shrinkage of the Central Library Plan, was one of the very highest priorities of his administration.

Coverage of the Tall Towers of the Brooklyn Heights Library Sale Proposal and The Libraries Really Wanted By The Public

Curbed may have the best collection of visuals for the Brooklyn Heights Library sale proposals, but Brownstoner is the best site to see the charts of proposal features set up side-by-side, like how much retail space each project would have and perhaps to note that Proposal B, with an envisioned 15,500 square feet of retail, would have almost as much retail space as there would be library space.  See: Library Releases Proposals for New Brooklyn Heights Branch With Condos, Retail, by Rebecca, 12/13/13- Comments Possible.

At the end of this article are visuals for the rest of the proposals.  Just remember that if they acquire the still available development rights, none of the buildings that are shown here as big as they actually will be.

Looking in from outside the evening of the December 12, 2013 Community Advisory Committee meeting: The Business and Career portion of the Brooklyn Heights Library which would be eliminated as part fo accomplishing the proposed shrinkage

Why are our libraries shrinking if these buildings are all growing?  The readers of Curbed may have little idea of what a library is or know their value, suggesting that they all be `torn down’ because they think that  “Americans don't read anymore,” but that’s really far from the case.  Citizens Defending Libraries has plenty of links up on its site (last accessed December 16, 2013) about how usage of New York City’s libraries is way up (nearly 60% in terms of circulation and 40% programmatically), how “more people visited public libraries in New York than every major sports team and every major cultural institution combined,” how people love libraries, and about the importance and desirability of physical books (including for young people) that allow us to better learn and absorb information than from digital books.

See:

•    Citizens Defending Libraries Resource And Main Page 
  
•    Extra Useful Links About Libraries In General

Additionally, Citizens Defending Libraries has a page with links focusing specifically on the sell-off of Brooklyn libraries:

•    Extra Useful Links About Libraries In Brooklyn (Including The Brooklyn Height Branch And Business and Career Library, The Pacific Branch And Strategic Plan)

That said, since we are dealing with images of towers in this post, perhaps this brand new image fro the Atlantic, a chart that shows the public’s approval of libraries towering over all else, reflecting the results of a new Pew Study about libraries:  Public Libraries Are Better Than Congress, Baseball, and Apple Pie, Say Americans- Public approval polls reveal the amazing truth! By Robinson Meyer December 13, 2013

Towering approval of libraries, not towers.

Here is a link directly to the new Pew Study: Released December 11, 2013, How Americans Value Public Libraries in Their Communities, By Kathryn Zickuhr, Lee Rainie, Kristen Purcell and Maeve Duggan:

    Summary of Findings

    Americans strongly value the role of public libraries in their communities, both for providing access to materials and resources and for promoting literacy and improving the overall quality of life. Most Americans say they have only had positive experiences at public libraries, and value a range of library resources and services.

Proposal A:

285 feet tall

Rooftop park

Preservation in current location of library bas relief

Proposal B:

370 to 470 feet tall

Landscape version

Glass atrium?

Proposal C:

319 feet tall

319 feet tall

Proposal C's Donnell mimicking descending stair-step "flexible" space

Proposal D:

400 feet tall

Proposal E:

359 feet tall

Proposal F:

455 to 551 feet tall

-

New style (Donnell-inspired?) bookshelves- Concept being preeminent

Proposal G:

290 feet tall

    

’Tis the day to revisit our annual Noticing New York tradition: Checking in on the status of New York’s not-so-metaphorical `Ratnerville,’ which is to say to engage an annual stocktaking of the decisions we are making in the public sphere and whether we are veering off to a reality where a few of us revering money and accumulating “wealth” count for almost everything and the rest of us count for little.

The Noticing New York tradition of annual assessments of where we stand in this regard began in 2009: Thursday, December 24, 2009, A Christmas Eve Story of Alternative Realities: The Fight Not To Go To Pottersville (Or Ratnerville).  The next year I returned to the theme: Friday, December 24, 2010, Revisiting a Classic Seasonal Tale: Ratnerville.

When I first wrote, I spoke about how we use traditional Yuletide stories like the Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” about the reformation of the miser Scrooge or Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life,” in a sense much the same story, framing the importance of free will and choice in terms of alternative possible realities, in order to contrast the bunching up of wealth and treasure with the spirit of shared community and giving.

The tradition of New Year’s stock taking is not isolated to Christmas.  An important part of Rosh Hashannah, the Jewish New Year, and the Jewish holidays that come with the fall equinox, is the self-examination, repentance and asking for forgiveness that are the work of restoring right relationship with the world going forward.   The Jewish tradition associates the beginning of the New Year with the fall equinox, and other traditions associate the New Year with other times like the annual renewal of life that comes with spring.  Still, there is a special appeal for me in the contrasting extremes when the beginning of the New Year is associated with the winter solstice, the dark and deepening cold of the longest night of the year when the lights we offer each other for cheer seem to provide the greatest and most necessary comfort.

It is the longest night of the year, and it is also the turning point when the days begin to lengthen.

When I first wrote about “Ratnerville’ I was writing about how closely the accumulation of a huge swath of Brooklyn by Bruce Ratner and his Forest City Ratner company at the expense of the community at large paralleled in reality the foreboding alternative reality presented in the film “It’s a Wonderful Life.”  That was an alternative reality that had been avoided by the good choices made by George Bailey (played by Jimmy Stewart).   In the film, the plot of which I detailed, George Bailey was a banker, a good community-oriented banker, and the alternative reality (shown to George via the heavenly intervention of an angel, Clarence Oddbody) was a world in which Henry F. Potter, a bad banker, has monopolistically accumulated the ownership of everything in the town of Bedord Falls, Potter's instinct being to keep others impoverished to ensure and continue building his own wealth.

George represents the good but unexalted, perhaps unrecognized choices essential to a shared and vital community of mutual support.  Potter represents the vortex of bad decisions which George resists, decisions, seemingly simple, involving the potential of personal benefit for George at the cost of what really matters, his human relationships and human spirit.  Twice, George faces the specter of surrendering his fate to Potter, an unholy melding that would sacrifice up the fate of the other residents of the small town of Bedford Falls.

Whereas in the embodiment of choices is split between two the two bankers in “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1947), in “A Christmas Carol” (1843), preceding it by more than one hundred years, it is the character of Scrooge that, with his reformation, embodies both these polar opposites ending the story as an opposite example to his existence at the story’s outset.

While I have long believed myself to be quite an aficionado of the “Christmas Carol” story including who has played Scrooge and who has played it best,* it was only this season that it came to my attention, via Turner Classic Movies, that Lionel Barrymore, who plays the despicable Henry F. Potter in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” was also famous for playing Scrooge on annual radio broadcasts and was scheduled to play the role in the very fine 1938 film version of “A Christmas Carol” that ultimately starred his close friend Reginald Owen, due to an intricate cascade of misfortunes.

(* Seymour Hicks played the role in the first sound version of the story, Scrooge, 1935, followed fast afterward by the 1938 version with Reginald Owen. Hicks had previously played Scrooge in one of the silent film versions.  I am a firm believer that the 1951 “A Christmas Carol” with Alistair Sim is hands-down the best version, although I am fond of George C. Scott’s 1984 color version and always a fan of Patrick Stewart’s work who took a turn in 1999.  It is funny how strangely satisfying Mr. Magoo, voice by Jim Backus, was in the role in 1962, sort of the way Michael Caine’s performance was fun when he did a version with The Muppets in 1992.  I think I am one of the few people who saw and remember a version where  Basil Rathbone, more famous as Sherlock Holmes, played the role in 1956 -1954?.  He played it again in 1958.  In 1956 he played Scrooge in one production and in another Jacob Marley’s ghost opposite Frederic March’s Scrooge.  With the proliferation is retellings Rathbone was also able to play Marley’s ghost twice.  In the story Jacob Marley is Scrooge’s deceased partner, essentially a version of Scrooge who doesn’t get to reform.)   

Basil Rathbone on leftplaying the ghost of Jacob Marley, Scrooge's deceased partner, essentially a version of Scrooge  who doesn't get to reform and on right in another production playing Scrooge who does eventually reform

In "It's a Wonderful Life": on left Lionel Barrymore (who played Scrooge in annual radio broadcasts) playing the Scrooge-like Henry Potter and on right Jimmy Stewart playing George Bailey, the banker with friends who fends off succumbing to the Potter world

Alistair Sim, perhaps the very best ever to play Scrooge.  On left, Scrooge the epitome of a miser at the outset of the film.  On right, the reformed Scrooge now a model of kindness and generosity (above six images added 12/26/'13)

The story of Scrooge is perhaps more powerful and daring (and hopeful) than the incarnation of these themes in the similar “It’s a Wonderful Life” tale because it envisions that the wealthy, misguided though they may be when they hoard, are themselves spiritually malnourished by their preoccupation with accumulating wealth.  The 2009 book, “The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger", by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson makes the case that unequal societies deprive and impoverish not only the poor, but the wealthy as well, that “unequal societies are bad for everyone within them-the rich and middle class as well as the poor.”

Not depicted in every film version of "A Christmas Carol" are the swarms of ghosts like Marley revealed to be haunting the air high outside Scrooge's window consigned to float futilely and literally aloof, able to do nothing but realize how in life they separated themselves from the rest of mankind.  Above, clockwise from upper left, 1.) The Mr. Magoo cartoon version, 2.) Drawing for a Speaking Books version 3.) Another cartoon film version, 4.) The Alistair Sim version.

Above, the ghost swarm revealed and visible from Scrooge's window upon Marley's defenestrating departure in the Patrick Stewart film version

A year ago, after a fall season of intense media hype, I was writing about how the piled up pirate treasure of the newly opened Ratner/Prokhorov “Barclays” arena represented an impoverishment of the neighborhood despite the way that people were crowing about “the spectacle of its glitter.”  See: Monday, December 24, 2012, While I Tell of Yuletide Treasure.  Two years ago I wrote about the accumulating takings of the public realm in that year: Saturday, December 24, 2011, Traditional Christmas Eve Revisit of a Classic Seasonal Tale: Ratnerville, the Real Life Incarnation of the Abhorred Pottersville.

The "Barclays" Center advertising oculus showing Barbra Streisand

This year despite the costly subsidies for that arena ($700,000 for two Barbra Streisand Concerts?) people are talking about how that arena is not making financial projections and its owners may cut back on its glitter’s polish.  No matter, it’s too early to project the private profit.

This year the true measure of where, without correction, we could be headed in this society came in the form of plans revealed at the very beginning of the year to sell off our heavily used and relied upon New York City libraries in deals concocted to benefit developers, not the public.  I could hardly believe it.

Libraries?  Could there be any better example of giving and pooling of resources to be shared for the common good and for the pursuit of the highest human aspirations than libraries?  Therefore could there be anything more astoundingly miserly on the part of the well-to-do and well connected than to take those resources, generous gifts from the past, to sell them off and shrink the library system in deals where the eye is on private profit?    While many public assets were being put on the sales block by the departing Bloomberg administration and its friends, schools, parks, public housing playgrounds, hospitals, one must wonder:  If we can’t stop them at libraries where can we stop them?

In February, my wife Carolyn McIntyre and I co-founded Citizens Defending Libraries (with an associated petition) to at least stop the sell-off of the city’s libraries and the deliberate underfunding and shrinkage of the library system.  It’s been a hell of a year.  (Oh yes, though it’s not what it’s all about, Ratner’s in the picture too when it comes to libraries.)

Selling off libraries and diminishing the public commons is not good for anyone, the wealthy included.  Why are we doing it?  One reason is that costly subsidies were being directed at supporting the private profit of Ratner and Prokhorov’s arena while the libraries were being deliberately underfunded at unprecedentedly low level.  That underfunding by the Bloomberg administration commenced at approximately the same time the administration commenced moving forward with the library sell-offs.

Truth to tell, we are not just wrangling with problem human values these days, not just the human instinct for personal and individual gain.  Our values, and the values of the wealthy, today are mediated through a corporatist filter.  It has been suggested that if corporations were truly the individuals the U.S. Supreme Court has suggested they must be treated as, they would, by definition be considered psychopathic.  Corporations can only be motivated by the pursuit of profit.  Profit doesn’t and can’t measure the common good.

One of the things afoot his year that is terrifying is possible passage of the TPP, the Trans Pacific Partnership, a proposed treaty that would in multiple ways make governments subservient to international corporations.  See:  Saturday, October 12, 2013, The Other Government Shutdown Now In The Works (One You Are Not Hearing About): A Corporate Replacement Of Government Via The Trans-Pacific Partnership Treaty.

A couple of weeks ago I was listening to Pete Dolack, author of the blog “Systemic Disorder,” speak about the TPP.  He suggested that with its system of secrete tribunals it would put corporations on a par with governments.  I suggested, and I think we agreed, that corporations would actually be at a higher level: The secret tribunals would only be empowered to decide cases between governments based upon the criteria of profit, not public good.*  In other words the playing field would be tilted to consider only what is important to corporations and not the public welfare it is the job and duty of government to deliver.**  There is much that is good in the world that never gets measured in terms of monetary exchanges or profit.  But wasn’t that what the Dickens “Christmas Carol” story was about too?  Likewise, "It's a Wonderful Life."

(*   The New York Times recently wrote confirmingly about how the TPP (not specifically referd to by that name in the article) and other treaties now affecting countries in Africa wipe out or substantially impede the ability of countries to regulate corporations to improve public health.  In the case of their articles the examples only involved tobacco, but the issues are much more broad based.  See: Tobacco Firms’ Strategy Limits Poorer Nations’ Smoking Laws, by Sabrina Tavernise, December 13, 2013.)

(** Corporate interests can get advantage over of the needs of government and public welfare through technicalities people might never imagine or understand.  This Christmas Eve morning I woke up to a story of the front page of the New York times business section telling me something I wouldn’t have suspected- was I not thinking?- despite having worked with bankruptcy attorneys and collecting many legal opinions addressing the potential of bankruptcy issues: As of relatively recently, there is “unusual provision in the federal bankruptcy code” giving “traders in swaps, options and other derivatives” a special status, “a so-called safe harbor.” Those fellows have been given, in contradistinction to other creditors, “a legal right to 100 cents on the dollar.”  Among other things, this means that, in the case of Detroit’s bankruptcy, the unusual right to 100% payment cannot be balanced against the “very strong public-interest considerations” in returning Detroit to a properly function status and health, this despite the fact that the article suggests that the $1.4 billion transaction that generated these rights was sort of a bankers’ swindle for Detroit that “smells’ when examined.  The article suggests that exactly contrary to its original intention of providing financial stability, the safe harbor Congress handed out may have led to the assumption of bigger risks, more derivative activity and bigger likelihood of financial meltdown.  Something to sort out and think about.  See: December 23, 2013, ‘Safe Harbor’ in Bankruptcy Is Upended in Detroit Case, by Mary Williams Walsh.)

And if you don’t remember that not everything that is good in the world can be measured in terms of money will you then become separated from your values and from the rest of society?

Days ago the architectural critic for the New York Times, Michael Kimmelman, wrote a column of restrained alarm about the new super-tall towers that are being built in Manhattan to exult the wealth of the 1% and literally place them at a level above all other citizens, potentially at the expense* of everyone else.  See: Critic’s Notebook-  Seeing a Need for Oversight of New York’s Lordly Towers, by Michael Kimmelman, December 22, 2013.

(*  Among other things Kimmelman pointed out how five of these luxury towers are recently the subject of investigation because somebody inveigled Albany legislators to bypass city officials and specially exempt the buildings from property taxes.  This was a special deal even the Bloomberg administration wasn't accepting.  See:  See: Monday, October 14, 2013, Governor Andrew Cuomo Quashes Moreland Commission’s REBNY Subpoena and Other Follow-The-Money Subpoenas Hitting Too Close To Home and Friday, October 25, 2013, Update On Cuomo Corruption Investigation’s Nonissuance of Subpoenas- More Subpoenas Are going Out, Just Not To REBNY .)

Kimmelman also, in the footsteps of Ada Louise Huxtable and her last column for the Wall Street Journal (one year ago- December 3, 2012), has criticized the New York Public Library’s Central Library Plan with its consolidating shrinkage, sell-off of libraries and destruction of the 42nd Street Central Reference Library stacks.

Slide promoting Skyscraper Museum Show- Left to right: 432 Park Avenue, One57, 111 West 57th, Four Seasons at 30 Park Place, 56 Leonard, Hudson Yards Tower D.

Kimmelman’s cautionary article about the new towers going up for the wealthy was likely promoted by the a new show about them at the Skyscraper Museum together with an unfortunately after-the-fact critical report, “The Accidental Skyline,”  from the Municipal Art Society.  These buildings are startling and it is hard to absorb or assess their impact on the rest of us even as we know that they will cast shadow on Central Park (worst at the winter solstice).  Kimmelman’s online article links to information about them.  The sales website for one of them, 432 Park Avenue is itself enough to astound in terms of how much it alone must have cost to build.  It affords 360 degree views of what can be seen from the various apartment heights under construction, including the very tallest.

Added Dec 25, 2013- Daily News extracting shadow diagrams from MAS "Accidental Skyline" report.

Rendering of 432 Park Avenue

Expected view south from 432 Park Avenue

Looking down, what were once considered very tall buildings rimming Central Park, such as those on Central Park West now seem tiny.  It is like an airplane view.  I remember my three year old cousin in awe after his first airplane ride explaining his experience.  “They looked like ants,” he said.  Do we look like ants to the buyers of these apartments?  How will the buyers of these apartments experience us?

Rendering of 432 Park Avenue

Expected view north from 432 Park Avenue over Central Park- Click on this or any other image in this post to enlarge

Added Dec 25, 2013- Daily News extracting shadow diagrams from MAS "Accidental Skyline" report.

Kimmelman writes about one of the buildings, the Nordstrom Tower, oddly configured for the sake of better views of Central Park to “cantilever over the Art Students League, a landmark building from the 1890s, in French Renaissance style, by Henry J. Hardenbergh.”   Says Kimmelman: “Picture a giant with one foot raised, poised to squash a poodle.”

Slide promoting Skyscraper Museum Show-"View of Central Park from One57"

At the same time that I looked at the scarily exciting views that will be seen from 432 Park Avenue I had to wonder.  I thought about Charles Montgomery's new book about the benefits of urban living:   “Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design.” Urban living, Montgomery says, makes people happier, but even as he suggests that urban density helps people to be happier, he says that, based on surveys, there is a Goldilocks zone were people are happiest.  People living in cities are happier than those living in suburbs, but those living in city towers are not as happy as those living in more low-rise environments.  See: Does City Living Make Us Happy? Leonard Lopate Show, Monday, November 04, 201.

Tall luxury buildings are coming to teeter over Brooklyn Heights too if Mayor de Blasio doesn't continue to fend off those who would sell and significantly shrink the Brooklyn Heights Library to build such towers.

Renderings released by the Brooklyn Public Library of two of the buildings that might be chosen to replace the Brooklyn Heights Library if it is sold and shrunk.  Neither is as tall as possible.

Might there be taller building looking more like this?  The subject was explored by Noticing New York.

Maybe those people living up so high in those apartments won’t actually be so happy (if they reside in them at all).  Might the vertiginous thrill of those views only present them with anxiety, reminding them of the precarious purchase they have on their advantageous over and separation from others in society?

I know how my past year has been spent:  I have been cheered to be working in the company of others fighting for our communities and preservation of the public realm, a realm that we can all benefit from by sharing.

As the shadows lengthen to maximum on a winter solstice evening might we imagine their darkness generating a Dickensian ghost swarm to fill the view?  (added 12/26/'13)

Tom Wolfe at the White House, from Wikipedia

It’s the holidays!  The gift-giving season!. .

. .  Let’s talk about some gifts that are not being given these days. . .  to New York City’s libraries.

Previously, Noticing New York has written about how it is a problem these days if you want to give to New York City libraries because what you give to libraries paid for with taxpayer and charitable contributions might well be wasted when libraries are sold.  Donations might even be used to sell, shrink and dismantle New York’s library system assets.  See: Wednesday, October 30, 2013, Conundrum For Those Wanting To Donate To Libraries: People Who Would Use Our Donations To Shrink and Sell Off Libraries.

Perhaps the New York Public Library felt a little distraction was in order.  At the November 20, 2013. NYPL trustees’s meeting Tony Marx finished up his president’s report to the trustees hinting at a headline grabber that would be unveiled at the end of the meeting concerning an “amazing note and celebration of another gift to the library.”  This turned out to be the NYPL’s acquisition of the `Tom Wolfe papers.’  When the time came for Mr. Marx to talk about this acquisition, he reported it under the rubric of enhanced “public accessibility” and described it as an “ongoing gift,” . . . “the gift that keeps on giving” because Mr. Wolf would, in moving his collection of papers to the library, also send everything that is subsequently “added to his collection.”

Why might Mr. Marx have been especially eager to showcase a gift to the NYPL from a celebrated author with great fanfare?  Because, months before in June, what had made the pages of New York Times respecting the NYPL was that Edmund Morris, another celebrated author had announced he "no longer intended to leave his research archive to the library as had been planned" because the library was no a longer fit repository for preserving works or making them available to the public.  Mr. Morris announced this as he was giving testimony before a state assembly hearing expressing his concern that the NYPL was proposing to gut the stacks of the 42nd Street Central Reference Library, part of the consolidating shrinkage of the “Central Library Plan” whereby two other major libraries, Mid-Manhattan and the Science, Industry Business Library (SIBL) are supposed to be sold off in real estate deals.  The New York Times quoted Mr. Morris as follows:

An exquisite repository is now going to be turned into a populist hangout, and have its former stack space stuffed with more and more and more and more miles of computer cable . . . That’s O.K. for scholars whose attention span extends back no farther than the early 1980s. But those of us cognizant of what happened to civilization after the great library in Alexandria burned down can only think with trepidation of what the Central Plan is going to do to the historical memory of New York.

(See: Critics Prompt New Review of Library Plan, by Robin Pogrebin, June 27, 2013.)

Mr. Morris’ full testimony can be watched here:



Pulitzer Author Edmund Morris Testifies Against Central Library Plan, Published on Jul 11, 2013 (on Citizens Defending LibrariesYouTube Channel- I am a co-founder of Citizens Defending Libraries and a promoter of its petition opposing the sale of  New York City libraries.)

So, given a few months, the NYPL had, via Mr. Wolfe, come up with an attention-getting counter to Mr. Morris’ criticism and bad news.  The only problem was that the papers coming from Mr. Wolfe are not going to be a gift.  The library will be paying for them, a reasonably appreciable amount at that:
$2.15 Million.  See:  Right Stuff? The Library Thinks So, and Buys It- Library Acquires Tom Wolfe’s Papers for $2.15 Million, by Jennifer Schuessler, November 20, 2013.

To be fair, Mr. Wolfe’s papers are truly likely to be of interest to those who look a back a little way in time so Mr. Morris’ jab at “scholars whose attention span extends back no farther than the early 1980s” was not perfectly prescient if Mr. Morris had thought to be envisioning something like the Wolfe collection when he spoke.  Mr. Wolfe’s first novel, "Bonfire of the Vanities," may have been released only as recently as 1987 but Mr. Wolfe was receiving significant public recognition going back to the cusp when the late 1960s turned into the early 1970s.  Even so, Wolfe might still be viewed as sufficiently topical in nature and not yet so thoroughly tested by time as to make one wonder about Mr. Marx's self-congratulatory praise for the transaction quoted in the Times stressing history: “It will add significantly to the library’s holdings not just in American literature but in the history of New York City as well.”

Mr. Morris is best known for his biographies of two United States Presidents: Theodore Roosevelt, who as president from 1901 to 1909 has made it into certifiable history, and Ronald Reagan, who was president during the "Bonfire of the Vanities" era, 1981–1989.

Maybe time will prove the historical value of the Tom Wolfe collection, but couldn’t the collection have been given to the library rather than sold to the library for $2.15 million?  Oughtn’t it have been given rather than sold and for such a pretty penny at that?  That’s the argument at least one critic offered in an article at the website “The Awl”:

So first, to be polite: thank you for making this happen. And now. So many questions: Why not take the tax donation? Why send out our troubled libraries to secure seven figures for what should be a gracious gift? Also: Just, why?

The New York Public Library's wonderful Stephen A. Schwarzman building is mid-step in possibly great and possibly terrible changes, including moving materials to off-site storage. They have just announced that they are delaying release of their latest design plan. The actual future use of the main library as a research facility is literally at question right now. Tacky timing, Tommy.

(See:  Rich People- Old Pig Demands $2.15 Million From Our Library For His Dusty Papers, by Choire Sicha, November 21st, 2013.)

In making its argument, the Awl article described Mr. Wolfe as “83 and also quite wealthy.”  Authors are frequently far from well-to-do.  Therefore, before I castigated an author for taking money that was available and on the table I thought I’d check and see what I could find out about Mr. Wolfe’s resources.  I don’t know Mr. Wolfe’s current net worth or what kind of money Mr. Wolfe might have at any time squandered.  I did find. however, that in January 2008 Mr. Wolf was signing a book proposal contract for $7 million.  (See: Inside Tom Wolfe's $7 Million Book Proposal, 1/8/2008.)  Not only did `Bonfire’ sell well; its rights were bought and it was made into a big budget 1990 film (although that film bombed at the box office).

Offering her commentary for the New York Times about the acquisition of the Tom Wolfe papers, Ginia Bellafante observed: “charity here is more closely tied to self-promotion than to the anonymous doing of good works.”  Ms. Bellafante might have been talking about Mr. Wolfe's self-promotion with these words; his transaction to put his papers in the library was certainly raising his profile in the news. But Ms. Bellafante was actually talking about how acquisition of the Tom Wolfe papers will be made possible with a “generous donation from NYPL Trustee Katharine Rayner” according to the NYPL’s press release.  You see, although Mr. Wolfe was not giving his papers, there was an actual gift of funds being funneled by the NYPL into this purchase.  Ms. Bellfonte was talking about Ms. Rayner's self-promotion (using Tom Wolfe), not Mr. Wolfe's.

Ms. Bellfonte pointed out that:

while the figure is hardly exorbitant in the realm of cultural philanthropy, which vastly outpaces social-service philanthropy, it represents more than twice the amount of the biggest gift ever made by an individual to the Food Bank for New York City. The all too obvious irony is that it is just this sort of fracture in the city’s psychology that might find trenchant expression in a piece of writing by Tom Wolfe.

Mr. Marx, promoting the Tom Wolfe papers acquisition story in an interview with the Times when NYPL’s press release came out, similarly observed the Wolfe penchant for writing about the wealthy and class divides while staying away from impolitic specific mention of such hot-button terms:

Tom Wolfe has been a citizen and analyst and critic of New York society in the midst of some of its greatest controversies,” . . . His work touches on so much of the sociology of the city. . 

Yep, one of Mr. Wolfe’s Vanity Fair stories in 2009 was titled “The Rich Have Feelings Too,” synopsised in the Wall Street Journal (August 27, 2009, The Horror of Flying Commercial After Private Jets): The rich don’t like the experience of being cut down to size when they have to fly commercial airlines like everybody else.

Aside from countering the bad press of the Edmund Morris announcement, why was the NYPL, governed by its wealthy trustees, so very eager to acquire the Tom Wolfe collection that they leaped to spend $2.15 million on it at this time?  Does acquisition of the caricaturing work tame it?  Make it seem somehow friendlier, more manageable?  Put it in is place?  Relegate Mr. Wolfe to a court jester role?  Does it signify that Mr. Wolfe has been invited safely into the club?

According to the Times, the Wolfe collection, already 190 boxes of material, will take up “about 100 linear feet” of the ever more limited shelf space the NYPL is fast reducing with its plans to sell off libraries and destroy the Central Reference Library stacks.  See: Wednesday, November 27, 2013, Are NYPL Trustees Flying Blind on The Basics? Numbers To Inform Them About The Drastic Dwindling of Books In Manhattan’s Principal Libraries Are Missing From Their Minutes, and Thursday, November 21, 2013, Drastically Reducing Manhattan’s Main Library Space (At City Expense), The NYPL Was Only Just Recently Increasing Its Space (At City Expense).

The NYPL’s conception is that as it makes shelf space for books in Manhattan ever more limited and precious it doesn’t need to maintain shelf space for its books and collections in Manhattan; that instead, it is sufficient to send its books and collections off to Princeton in southern New Jersey. 

Will Mr. Wolfe’s collection be shipped off to New Jersey too?

Mr. Wolfe seems to think he has cut a different deal with the library.  According to the Times, Mr. Wolfe values his collection enough to have that collection occupy top-price Manhattan real estate.  It is:   “Currently in storage in Mr. Wolfe’s apartment building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.”

As for the future, Mr. Wolfe seems to envision that his collection will continue to occupy that kind of real estate even though this is exactly the sort of real estate that the NYPL is very busy finagling to sell as it plans the shrinkage of libraries:

“I feel like I’m not parting with it,” Mr. Wolfe said. “After all, it will be just down the street.”

Will it really?

If Mr. Wolfe feels up to writing a serious saga about class distinction and class conflict in today’s world he could write brutally, acerbicly, and with all the profligate exclamation points and capital letters he wants about how libraries, our institutions of Democracy, the `great equalizers’ according to Rolling Stone Keith Richards, are now being sold off in real estate deals calculated to benefit a privileged few, not the public.  That saga, well written, is one that ought to stand the test of time.