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Brooklyn Public Library suffers massive funding shortfall
Somebody lend them a hand!
Brooklyn’s more than a century
old library system is feeling
its age, and the borough’s beloved book
lender is struggling under the weight
of decades-old buildings that require
multimillion-dollar renovations.
The city has committed an unprecedented
$278 million in capital funding
to prop up Brooklyn Public Library
over the next 10 years, but the
book lender remains $247 million shy
of meeting its repairs quota, and experts
say only the taxpayers can prevent
Brooklyn’s beloved libraries from
literally falling apart.
“We’re an old city, an aging city,
and the library is no exception,” said
Eli Dvorkin of the Manhattan-based
economic policy think tank Center for
an Urban Future. “No matter how you
slice and dice it, the city has to invest
more.”
The nation’s sixth-largest booklending
system, Brooklyn Public Library
consists of 59 branches with an
average age of more than 60 years old.
One of its most senior branches, the Andrew
Carnegie-built Pacifi c Branch in
Park Slope, debuted in 1904 and suffers
from nearly $12 million in unfunded
repairs, including interior and exterior
renovations, along with needed
ONE BROOKLYN | W 6 INTER 2019–2020
heating and electrical upgrades.
Meanwhile, the Williamsburg
branch on Division Avenue has a $14.7
million shortfall, the Sheepshead Bay
branch needs $10.6 million for drainage
repairs, air conditioning upgrades,
and rent, and the DeKalb branch on
Bushwick Avenue requires $9.4 million
for general repairs inside and out.
Worst of all is the library’s grand
Central Branch in Prospect Heights,
which the library lists as requiring
$63.5 million worth of “various improvements.”
These unfunded repair tabs are what
remain after considering the nearly
$280 million in public funds the city
will provide the library system between
2020 and 2029, most of which is being allocated
towards small, easily managed
projects, such as fi xing roofs or air-conditioning,
and not overhauling decadesold
structures, according to a senior fi -
nance offi cial with the organization.
“We have lots of piecemeal projects,”
said Karen Sheehan, the library’s executive
vice president for fi nance and administration.
“We don’t have a reserve
of capital dollars that are earmarked for
the major overhauls.”
And in lieu of another $200–$300 million
taxpayer-funded windfall, Brooklyn
Public Library has been forced to
explore alternative strategies for generating
revenue, including some deals
that readers have found unsavory.
In 2014, the book lender sold the historic
Brooklyn Heights branch at Cadman
Plaza West for $52 million to developer
Hudson Companies, which razed
the building in 2017 and is in the process
of erecting a 38-story luxury condo
tower, which will feature a three-story
library branch at its base come 2020.
The deal relieved the library system
of an ailing branch and paved
the way for construction of a new one,
but local bookworms nonetheless condemned
the scheme as a deal with the
devil, and accused library executives
of pandering to developers.
“The public’s interest has not been
the primary concern,” Pearl Hochstadt,
a Brooklyn Heights resident
since 1953, said back in 2014. “There’s
been too much consideration for real
estate interests.”
Other partnerships have been less
controversial. The library system
partnered with a nonprofi t affordable
housing developer, the Fifth Avenue
Committee, in 2016 to demolish the old
Sunset Park Library and redevelop the
site on Fourth Avenue to feature a much
larger branch, along with 49 units of affordable
housing due in 2020.
“The old library was about 12,000
square feet and was one of the busiest
in our system,” said David Woloch, executive
vice president for external affairs
at Brooklyn Public Library. “It
was essentially bursting at the seams
and we’re going to get a library that’s
about 20,000 square feet.”
The library is also taking advantage
of a 2011 settlement with ExxonMobil
over an oil spill in Newtown Creek to
replace its Greenpoint branch, and has
worked out a deal with Brooklyn Children’s
Museum to move their Bower
Street branch into the Crown Heights
cultural institution.
But for all of Brooklyn Public Library’s
wheeling and dealing, the
book lender remains buried under the
weight of aging buildings that need
immediate repairs, according to Woloch,
who claims the city must act if it
wants to salvage a library system that
isn’t getting any younger.
“Rather than doing the work in
drips and drabs and fi xing an air conditioner
and a couple of years later a
roof there, the smart way to do this
work — it requires planning and it
requires more funding — is to do as
much of the work holistically,” he said.
“The longer we go without tackling
those needs, the larger they get.”
The Brooklyn Public Library faces a whopping $247 million in unmet repairs.
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