Appellate Court Hearing on View-Blocking Brooklyn Bridge Park Development: Who Knew What And When As A Community Needed Protection? (In the audience Mr. Gutman nods.)

Outside after Friday, the 20th Appellate Court argument: Center background in suit and blue shirt Hank Gutman member of the defendant Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation, Center in trench coat Otis Pratt Pearsall who sought protection for views from the Promenade, foreground in red tie Steven Guterman who started plaintiff Save The View Now organization to object to view-blocking Pierhouse hotel/residential complex being oversized.

Friday, the 20th, there was an Appellate Court argument on Monroe Place about whether the already mostly constructed “bulky Pierhouse hotel/residential complex in Brooklyn Bridge Park” should be reduced in size because it is 30 feet taller than the view plane height limit negotiated with the community in 2005.   Technically, the hearing was about whether the community group Save The View Now was within the statute of limitations when it brought its lawsuit.  In bigger picture terms, the discussion and questions being asked by the judges involved who knew what when in terms of protecting the community from the encroachment that now blocks the iconic view of the Brooklyn Bridge the public previously enjoyed when visiting the Brooklyn Heights Promenade.

It was explained to the court by a lawyer defending the development and the quasi-governmental Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation that oversaw it that there were decisions to alter the building by putting additional (view-blocking) mechanical equipment on top of it because of Hurricane Sandy, which hit New York City as Superstorm Sandy October 29, 2012.

When after that was it that, the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation made the decision and was the building’s taller height ever made official with any sort of publicly released and available approval document?  That did not appear clear from any response to the judge’s questions.  And, presuming something like that actually happened, when it was incumbent upon members of the public to notice that the assured height limit negotiated in 2005 was being cast aside so that the public needed to take action to protect itself.

One thing I found particularly interesting during the hearing arguments of the lawyers for the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation and the developer (Toll Brothers) was to watch Hank Gutman (Henry B. Gutman).  Although sitting in the audience, Hank Gutman tends to be very much a central player:

    •    Mr. Gutman is on the board of the  Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation, which, with him there, has been promoting maximum development within the “park” for some time now.

    •    Mr. Gutman is also a trustee on the Brooklyn Public Library board, which has been promoting sale of its libraries to turn them into redevelopment projects, like the Brooklyn Heights Library sale benefitting developer David Kramer and his Hudson Companies (plus also benefitting Kramer’s architect, Marvel Architects, the same firm working on and doing the calculations determining how tall the Pierhouse Building would be.)

    •    Mr. Gutman was also on the board of the Brooklyn Heights Association (having also been an officer there too) until the beginning of 2011 when he resigned in protest over a lawsuit the neighborhood brought against improper development in Brooklyn Bridge Park.

    •    Lastly, Mr. Gutman (along with a fellow BBPC trustee also involved in pushing library sales, David Offensend) was one of the first to buy condos in the extra-tall Pierhouse building that was the subject of the litigation.  In theory, any applicable law was interpreted such that the trustees’ purchase of apartments was not considered a breach of ethics.

What was interesting to watch about Mr. Gutman was the way he was nodding his head affirmatively to help communicate to the court that everyone knew that the building was going to be extra tall, so much taller than originally expected.  `Did the community know?’  Gutman nodded his head.  `The Brooklyn Heights Association knew?’: This was when the fellow in the chair immediately in front of Gutman swiveled around happily excited to confer with the nodding Gutman.  That man looked like a lawyer; you know, the briefcase, the suit, the haircut, etc.  Gutman is a lawyer too.

Nodding Mr. Gutman was first out of the court house.

The nodding, or subtle gestures to hopefully communicate with the court, is typical and permitted courtroom decorum.  Members of the audience are not supposed to actually talk or be disruptive, but, like a public hearing, you sort of hope that maybe you’ll have a lot of people on your side of the case in the court room and that subtle facial expressions during the arguments will get picked up upon. . . .  Then there is the subject of chuckling (sometimes absurdities will provoke that reaction in you if you don’t want to actually cry): The United States Justice Department is prosecuting a woman who chuckled during a United States Senate hearing when it was asserted that the record of racial discrimination by Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions was a “clear and well-documented” record of “treating all Americans equally under the law.”  Senator Elizabeth Warren was silenced and kicked out of the Senate Chamber for attempting to introduce facts that would have set the record on this straight.

I was fascinated by how firm and opinionated Mr. Gutman seemed to be about how everybody knew what they supposedly knew.  I remember back to February 3, 2015 when the there was a vote by the Brooklyn Bridge Park Community Advisory Committee (CAC) calling for a halt to the building’s construction.  The CAC is supposed to be comprised of members from the community to represent it and is supposed to exist to help keep track of what is happening with respect to Brooklyn Bridge Park.  The CAC that night voted for a halt in construction partly based on the fact that the CAC had not been informed of how the building would be extra tall blocking the views that were supposed to be protected.  The CAC may have no actual powers, but at the meeting the BBPC described the CAC as the “primary vehicle for communicating with the public.”

Brooklyn Eagle coverage of the CAC vote meeting attended by a public very upset about the oversized development.

At the meeting the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation representatives provided their explanation of how the building had become so extra tall.  What I remember asking myself and listening carefully for at that meeting was what the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation board knew and approved.  That’s the BBPC board that Mr. Gutman is on.  It seemed to me that violating the agreed upon view protections, something so important to the community, something giving so much extra benefit to the developer in terms of extra building rights, was something that the BBPC board should have approved. . . What did the BBPC board know and when?  - It would seem that in a rational world the board should have had to debate and formally approve it.  I didn’t hear anything about that.

Instead, I heard the most obfuscatory explanations about how the much bigger building just sort of happened at staff level, ostensibly for a conglomeration of strange and obscure technical reasons.  I quote:

When you are dealing with height, height should be a very easy thing to understand, but when you are dealing with a building’s it’s more complicated to understand, which involves a question of where are you measuring from and where are you measuring to?  One of the questions I like to bring up on that is with respect to One Freedom Tower and, is it the tallest building in America or not.  Do you count the spire as height?  There are a lot of questions. . . .[the public audience got impatient at this point and started complaining volubly] . .

     . .  So we got questions from developers about where do you start counting from and where do you count to?  And we went to the ESDC [the Empire State Development Corporation, the nominal state authority parent of the city-controlled BBPC, an obscure quasi-governmental authority famous for having the freedom from being exempt from rules and getting to make them up instead.  The exemption enjoyed by ESDC and BBPC as its nominal subsidiary includes exemption from the standards of NYC zoning and NYC’s normally applicable ULURP process for public review]  A construct that ESDC uses for a lot of project plans is that whenever you have project plan those project plans are specific, and then you have a design attached to them. The general plan you have for Brooklyn Bridge Park, as you saw, is actually very general, and people have had problems with people asking questions that are not covered in the general project plan.  And what they have done in order to deal with that discrepancy is that in those cases they would defer to the local zoning plan [from which they are exempt].  The project plan does not actually say what the hundred feet is or where you measure it to.  Let’s look at how the New York City zoning code answers those two questions, and then the New York City zoning code there is a height restriction and there are lots of ways to calculate . . 

One would think that in order to implement the agreement with the community about preserving views, one would naturally look first and foremost to the BBPC's overall basic project plan for the building.  That plan had no need to be subject to any limiting constraints, but the BBPC representative went on to explain how BBPC instead chose to go outside the project plan to refer to NYC zoning (to which it was not subject) to pick a higher-up starting point to measure the building (referring to the floodplain calculations) and also allow things like “basically mechanical things, back of generators, HVAC equipment, elevator overrides, things like that . . to exceed height restrictions.”  He said, they then told developers they could exceed the height limitations these ways, “having got that instruction from ESDC.”

Thereafter when Superstorm Sandy happened, the BBPC representative said things got even worse for the community in terms of the building’s extra height.  The representative explained, floodplain elevations were changed to raise the building up higher “and that changed all the math that was involved.”  That extra elevation for the starting point at the bottom of the building was additional to the other changes blamed on Sandy at the court hearing about moving view-blocking mechanicals to the roof to make it taller at its top.  Naomi Klein warns us about “disaster capitalism”: When disasters strike, the monied interests take advantage of those disasters in self-serving ways.

The logic of these calculations didn’t go by unchallenged when they were explained at that February 3, 2014 CAC meeting: Local community activist Tony Manheim said that given that the BBPC project plans "trump" New York City zoning when desired, “It’s a little bit disingenuous to take advantage of avoiding New York City zoning when it’s convenient to do so and then cherry pick zoning practices to allow the exceeding of height limitations by bulkheads which somehow seem to also include a bar and café.”

The Sandy related changes that made the building still bigger were, according to the ESDC representative, being made until September 2013.  If construction of the building started in summer of 2013 as was stated at the court hearing, that would mean that Sandy related design changes were being made even after construction started.  At the hearing it was discussed that people in the community were first beginning to notice that the building was getting too tall in September 2014.  The plaintiff organization Save the View Now was formed because of this in December of 2014.

Mr. Gutman’s nodding of his head doesn’t necessarily indicate anything beyond that fact that he wanted the court to rule that the community knew and that Brooklyn Heights Association knew about the extra large size of the building at times early enough to cause the statute of limitation impediments the team of development supporting attorneys were arguing should defeat the case.  It doesn’t necessarily mean that Mr. Gutman (a BBPC board member), or the BBPC board knew at these or these (or other even earlier) times of the building’s extra large size.  (Rather than it being just the BBPC staff engaging in technical interpretation somersaults).  But it makes me wonder and sort of gives me that feeling that this was pretty much the case. . . .

. . . And if that is so, I have to ask: Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation is a governmental entity endowed with enormous governmental power- Doesn’t it thereby stand to reason that it owes a responsibility to the public to be absolutely clear, and should clearly alert the public when it is not planning to honor an agreement about protecting an important identified and agreed to public interest?  Is the BBPC entitled to play cat and mouse games about what it is doing?

Notwithstanding Mr. Gutman’s head nodding, it was not until very late in the game that public really figured out or knew what was going on.

At the hearing the development defending attorneys argued that the community reacted to the size of the building with “Rip Van Winkle” tardiness.  It was asserted that community had “inquiry” notice, “constructive” notice, and “actual” notice of the bigger building and the mechanicals “above the roof of the building.”  Leave it to lawyers to come up with assertions involving such parsed out multiplicities.   There was no assertion of “information gotten by pulling teeth” notice, “cat and mouse game triumph” notice, or “able to decipher technological gobbledygook” notice.  I also heard no direct explanation of what notice the Community Advisory Committee, the BBPC’s “ the “primary vehicle for communicating with the public,” got when it believes it got no notice and that instead the BBPC “dribbled out” information in a way that was deliberately intended to be uninformative.

It was even hinted that maybe notice letting the public know didn’t even matter: A development lawyer made the dodgy assertion that the “view was improved” by the project.  It was affirmatively asserted there was no stealth or concealment on the part of BBPC.

Respecting the Brooklyn Heights Association the argument was particularly interesting.  The lawyers defending the development’s size argued that by virtue of a December 2011* letter from BHA President Jane McGroarty that referred to an acceptable height for the building that was “exclusive of mechanical equipment” the record showed that Brooklyn Heights Association, the “the dominant civic organization” of a community of what was “not a bashful community,” had notice and was aware and was not objecting to the ultimate height of the building.

    (* Hank Gutman had left the BHA board earlier that year.)

Really?  Is that a good argument?  December 2011 was nearly a year before Superstorm Sandy and the cascade of rejiggering alterations with all the “math” involved changing (concluding September 2013) that, among other things, put an unexpected and atypical amount of extra stuff on the building’s roof making it taller.

There is other stuff we could brawl about here like what people are referring to the “bulkheads” being permitted on top building.  If you think you know buildings “bulkheads” might sound relatively innocuous and if you Google images of “bulkheads” for examples, the small slant-roofed minimalist protrusions you’ll see are not likely to suggest to you what has been constructed atop this building under the “bulkhead” rubric. .  including, as Tony Manheim put it, “a bar and café” ?

Crowd lingers to analyze after the hearing. Plaintiff attorney Jeff Baker on highest steps.

 This article is not intended to parse the exact legal arguments that forayed into the field at the Friday appellate court hearing, nor analyze the relative strength of the arguments and why certain arguments should perhaps logically prevail.  This musing over the situation is more for the purpose of giving a general feel for what is happening and the overall context in which it is taking place.

Closer up: Plaintiff attorney Jeff Baker on steps, Steve Guterman in red tie.

Will the appellate judges issue an order that could result in 30 feet being removed from the top of the unexpectedly tall view-blocking building?  People find that outcome startling to imagine, but it is absolutely within the judges' power to do so, although situations of this type presenting precedent are rare.  And, as counsel for the plaintiffs told the court, the defendants knowingly proceeded to build at their own risk.

The judges by their tone and skepticism seemed to at least consider that the community was likely treated badly.  But when do judges these days ever decide against the money?  One thing we might expect is something we have seen before in these situations: An opinion that scolds the BBPC and public development officials (including its board?), but then protects the monied interests from lose of their ill gotten gains despite such a judicial upbraiding.

This was in the first posting of Save The View Now December 31, 2015 to alert the community about the building's height.

Seasonal Reflection: Mayor de Blasio, His Heart Squeezed Grinch-Small, Starts Gifting Stolen Libraries To Developers For The Holidays

Mayor de Blasio becomes the Grinch arriving at Christmas to steal and shrink the public's libraries while disguised not so very credibly in a faux Santa Claus suit.

Noticing New York returns here to its now annual tradition.  It's the cusp of a new year and the winter solstice has arrived so it is once more that time when, we reflect with holiday spirit about . . .

In modern holiday tradition there is a fellow who arrives with stealth on Christmas Eve to surprise everyone as he makes the night the occasion for his mean-spirited takings.  He is that anti-Santa Clause, the Grinch, conceived by Dr. Suess.

This year our Mayor de Blasio has squeezed himself into the Grinch's faux Santa Claus costume to play that role by launching a sell-off and shrinkage of New York City Libraries with the sale and shrinkage (down to just 42%) of the Brooklyn Heights central destination library.  No doubt collapsing his 6'5" frame into such a tiny costume involved de Blasio shrinking his heart (to quote Dr. Susss) to to at least "three sizes too small," probably considerably less than 42% the size of a normal generous library-loving New Yorker's.

Mayor de Blasio's Christmas Eve launch of library sales is 180 degrees opposite to his campaign rhetoric about how we should halt the sale and shrinkage of libraries undertaken by the Bloomberg administration.  See Citizens Defending Libraries*: Sunday, December 20, 2015, PRESS RELEASE: De Blasio, reversing campaign pledge, commences selling NYC libraries delivering, in Grinch mode, huge shrinkage.

 (* Disclosure: I am a co-founder of Citizens Defending Libraries.)

When de Blasio spoke as a candidate wanting our votes there was no mistake that he was specifically including the Brooklyn Heights Library when calling for a halt to these sales and shrinkage because he mentioned it by name in his list.

In the videos linked to below you can see candidate de Blasio truthfully saying at that time:

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

Videos:

Selling Our Libraries!

Will Steve Levin Save the Brooklyn Heights Library?

What's especially frightening is how this sale and shrinkage is considered to be the first of many more library sales under de Blasio.  So Brooklyn Public Library president Linda Johnson told the City Council at its hearing about the Brooklyn Heights sale the sale is considered to be a "model" for transactions underway with respect to libraries throughout the city, not just for other libraries in her BPL system, but also for Queens and the NYPL.  Then, at the BPL trustee meeting the Tuesday before the City Council vote, the trustees applauding this sell-off and shrinkage were reminded how sale of this library was chosen as a “demonstration” for what was possible.  They were told that this was a “huge turning point for the library system” and “across the city in general” with Johnson `pioneering’ the future of libraries.

Maybe even more frightening is that this isn't actually the first library sale and shrinkage.  Though we certainly should have learned from it, this library essentially replicates, with the same people discernibly behind it, the Donnell sale debacle: Saturday, November 7, 2015, Priorities To Be Replicated?: Private Luxury Now Abounding Where Former Donnell Library Stood, A "Replacement" Library Is Nowhere In Sight.


It's ironic that this taking from the public comes right at Christmas, but not necessarily unintended.  Those pushing for controversial over-development in this city have their own tradition of scheduling advancement of these public encroachments for holidays, for times when they think the public will be least able to respond and pay attention, August vacation time, Thanksgiving and yes. . . . Christmas and New Years.

Pushing this particular library sale through already involved some very slick and not really above-board maneuvers by Brooklyn Community Board 2 the Fourth of July weekend.

Mayor de Balsio's Grinching with his Deputy Mayor for development, Alicia Glen, adopting this Bloomberg library sale and shrinkage as "her own," and by implication all the envisioned future library sales, to "push it across the finish line" falls into our lap to bemoan in what has been a Noticing New York tradition.

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.

Since 2009, Noticing New York has annually offered a stocktaking of the decisions we are making in the public sphere that make it appear that we are veering off to a reality where a select few of our population revering money and accumulating “wealth” count for almost everything while the rest of us are treated with increasingly less regard.  I’ve done this in the context of two other traditional Yuletide tales, both taking place in critical part on Christmas Eve, and both essentially the same story in many respects: Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” about the reformation of the miser Scrooge and Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Both these stories frame the importance of free will and choice in terms of alternative possible realities, in order to contrast decisions about the bunching up of wealth and treasure with the benefit and spirit of shared community and giving.

(* You can find out prior annual essays here: Thursday, December 24, 2009, A Christmas Eve Story of Alternative Realities: The Fight Not To Go To Pottersville (Or Ratnerville), Friday, December 24, 2010, Revisiting a Classic Seasonal Tale: Ratnerville, Saturday, December 24, 2011, Traditional Christmas Eve Revisit of a Classic Seasonal Tale: Ratnerville, the Real Life Incarnation of the Abhorred Pottersville, Monday, December 24, 2012, While I Tell of Yuletide Treasure, Tuesday, December 24, 2013, A Seasonal Reflection: Assessing Aspirations Toward Alternate Realities- 'Tis A Tale of Two Alternate Cities?.,Wednesday, December 24, 2014
Seasonal Reflections: No Matter How Fortunate or Not, We Are All Equal, Sharing a Common Journey

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

One matter these annual reflections has always tuned to is the way that Forest City Ratner’s takeover of a swath of Brooklyn constitutes a concentration of wealth and control that’s analogous to the way that in “It’s a Wonderful Life” the communally shared town of Bedford Falls became Pottersville in the alternate reality where unchallenged power was allowed to accumulate in the hands of Henry F. Potter, the bad town banker.  The unfortunate news to report this year with respect to Forest City Ratner is that its spreading power and influence in New York is continuing to grow like Potter’s did in that alternate reality. . .

An example of exactly what this transformation of our world means can be seen in the way we de Blasio, and Council Member Steve Levin as his delivery instrument to override the wishes of the community, are gifting the library this Christmas to developer David Kramer and his Hudson Companies.  They are valuing the library not from the perspective of the public, but only from the developer's.

CLICK TO ENLARGE (something you can't do with a library)- A gift to developer David Kramer (in suit) under the Brooklyn Heights Promenade XMass tree this year, the Brooklyn Heights Library, sold for less than the price of a vacant lot, courtesy of Mayor Bill de Blasio, The Brooklyn Heights Association, and Councilman Steve Levin.  Others were involved pushing for this sale, like Saint Ann's.  Kramer here was getting some elf-help from the construction union whom he has never treated well.  The union reversed positions of the public good of the sale when Kramer made some feeble work place safety concessions, sad for them and unwise in that unions wanting to reverse waning support from the public should seek to do so by supporting the public. 

 It is perhaps crass to try to talk about such an important and democratic and cultural institution as a library in purely financial terms but the Brooklyn Heights Library, substantially enlarged and fully upgraded at considerable public expense and sacrifice, would cost more than $120 million to replace.  It represents an accumulated investment of our tax dollars over the years.  Yet, the de Blasio/Levin sale of the library insistently views the library only from the vantage of the developer: The library will be sold to the developer for less than the price of a vacant lot.  The sale, a significant public loss, would net the city perhaps less than $25 million. . . Brooklyn Public Library president Linda Johnson told her board the net is to be some unspecified amount appreciably below $40 million, but we think her math obviously and deliberately overstates even this small as yet unspecified figure.

What is a library such as this worth?  Last year we quoted from Charles Dickens' “A Christmas Carol.”  I I think if fitting to return to a part of the exchange between Scrooge and his nephew again this year:

    Nephew: Oh I think there are many things from which I've derived some good, by which I have not profited financially, I dare say. There is more in life than money, Uncle.

    Scrooge: Humbug to that!  More in life than money!  Humbug!

So, until we teach him better, we'll have to let de Blasio drift, keeping the season in his "Humbug" developer-gifts-come-first fashion.  For the rest of us, let's all be blessed, every one of us, in knowing that what we value is so much more important and meaningful and in our collective commitment and New Year's resolution to fight for a future where those values will once more be respected.

How Self-Contradictory Can The Brooklyn Heights Association Be As It Advocates Sale And Shrinkage of The Brooklyn Heights Central Destination Downtown Library?

Three strikes and you're out?

The Brooklyn Heights Association has now taken three solidly self-contradicting positions as it digs in to argue for what's an obviously absurd stance for it to be taking in the first place: its promotion of the sale and shrinkage of the Brooklyn Heights Library, Brooklyn's central destination library in Downtown Brooklyn on Cadman Plaza West at the corner of Tillary and Clinton.

 • First, the BHA now arguing for the shrinkage of a library that it previously advocated be enlarged and which was, in fact, thereupon enlarged and considerably upgraded at appreciable public expense and inconvenience, reopening in the fall of 1993.

. .  Calling for the shrinkage of a library the BHA had previously called for the enlargement of?. .

. . . That's inconsistency Number 1.

 • Then, how is it that when Citizens Defending Libraries (of which I am a co-founder) asked the Brooklyn Heights Association to call for proper funding of New York City libraries so that the Brooklyn Heights, Mid-Manhattan, SIBL and Pacific Branch libraries would not be sold, the BHA refused to call for proper funding, saying such funding was NOT a neighborhood concern?. . . BUT NOW---  The Brooklyn Heights Association is calling for the Brooklyn Heights Library to be sold because (supposedly) the sale and shrinkage would mean that libraries in other neighborhoods would get better funding? . . . Actually, that is such a treacherously false belief about funding as to be patently silly, because there is no guarantee that money would actually go to libraries, this library is being sold off at a huge public loss in a transaction that may net less than zero cash, and selling off libraries to developers as a self-cannibalizing funding program may simply foster more underfunding.

Switching from saying that proper funding of NYC libraries is not a BHA or neighborhood concern to saying that it is an important enough BHA and neighborhood concern so that it's a reason to sell off the Brooklyn Heights Library is inconsistency Number 2.

 • Now you can read on the BHA's website that the BHA is opposing new buildings in Brooklyn Bridge Park because:

Public school overcrowding will be exacerbated by the additional development. PS 8 is already operating at more than 140% capacity and turning away local kindergarteners for this Fall.

Right!  . . . But tearing down and shrinking a library supporting educational pursuits and consequently the school system isn't a similar problem, or an even greater exacerbation of it?

That's inconsistency Number 3! . . .

. . . Three strikes and you are out?

Why then might we theorize the Brooklyn Heights Association wants to be so terrifically, consistently inconsistent when it comes to wanting to see the library sold?

Click to enlarge if you dare- The Library-squashing tower that would benefit Saint Ann's private school and a developer if built, but not the public.

Here is Noticing New York coverage where you can read about two things to which we must unfortunately give connected consideration:

• How at the June 17th Brooklyn Community Board 2 Land Use Committee hearing about selling and shrinking the library the developer refused to say what Saint Ann's school is being paid as a result of the library's sale and shrinkage because,"it's a private transaction". . . He said that even though this private transaction is driving a public one!

• How Saint Ann's-connected people are deciding for the Brooklyn Heights Association that the BHA should promote the sale and shrinkage of the library.

Friday, June 26, 2015, Embarrassment of Past Riches!: Augmentation of NYC Book Space At Two Business Libraries Simultaneously- Only Recently The Brooklyn Heights Association Fought For Larger, Not Smaller Libraries.

Brooklyn Hts Blog: Who do you support?

Who then do we want to trust on this?  Do we want to trust the consistently inconsistent Brooklyn Heights Association?  Or as the Brooklyn Heights Blog asked after the 2014 Brooklyn Heights Association annual meeting: Who do you support, the BHA or Citizens Defending Libraries?

I think it's pretty clear: If the Brooklyn Heights Association wants to truly represent the community and the public interest, as is its responsibility to do, it's time for the Brooklyn Heights Association to contradict itself just one final time, changing its position to oppose the sale and shrinkage of the library, and the BHA should do so now while doing so can still have a beneficial effect on the process. . .

It would be the most consistent thing it could do and the thing most consistent with the public's interest.

New Images of What Developer’s Luxury Tower Would look Like When It Kicks Out Brooklyn’s Central Destination Downtown Library, Stomps It Down To 1/3rd Size

Here are some new images, released in an information dump just before Wednesday’s Hearing (the 17th) on whether the public should approve the sale and shrinkage of the Brooklyn Heights Library, Brooklyn's central destination library in Downtown Brooklyn on Cadman Plaza West at Tillary and Clinton.

Guess what?:  The new tower is not the 20-story tower or the 30-story tower previously reported about in the press.  It seems to be 36 stories (perhaps, with super-high ceilings, the equivalent of a taller building) with leeway in its zoning envelope to grow.

Here, below, from the slick developer presentation the Brooklyn Heights Association chose to, and waited to be, a conduit of:

Here's a crop a little more in-between.

Here’s more information about Wednesday's hearing.  If you care about libraries and/or want to stand up to rapacious developers expecting our elected representatives to do their biding, not ours you should come, because you can make a difference:

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

Meanwhile, quite relevant to what’s unfolding, there’s an article in the Brooklyn Heights Blog about Saint Ann’s, a private school, and its transfer of library development rights to this development.  Saint Ann’s is taking cash and no longer taking any property for its involvement in this transaction. 

What is reported in the Blog does NOT mean that Saint Ann's won't be benefitting from the deal, or that the benefit to Saint Ann's won't continue to HELP DRIVE this deal: Saint Ann's, selling its development rights, will still be getting very substantial cash (with which it could even subsequently buy that cultural space condominium Mr. Kramer, the developer, offers in the Blog article)- This information comes out just days before FIRST EVER hearing this Wednesday.  That hearing starts the process to decide whether public approval should be given to sell and shrink a major NYC library, this one.

Previously it appeared Saint Ann’s was getting cash and property for its development rights.  That property could have been a 20,000 square foot student theater.  Based on these calculations, that theater (of "the an absurd public rip off") might have had a value of about $41.7 million.  So what is Saint Ann’s now getting?: That ($41.7 million) plus more cash?  Maybe $50-$55 million free and clear?  While the Brooklyn Public Library nets considerably below $30 million?  Perhaps effectively less than ZERO? 

If these guesses about who is really getting the most benefit, a private school or the public, seem unfair, remember that this is information that Citizens Defending Libraries (of which I am a co-founder) has asked be disclosed by the BPL.  The BPL devoted to its infinite lack of transparency has refused to provide the information. 

Here is more recent relate NNY coverage of the library sale:

•    Sunday, June 14, 2015, Selling a $100 Million Plus Library For What? A Pittance! More Transparency Please.

•    Monday, June 15, 2015, Municipal Art Society, Once Venerable, Becomes Platform For Disseminating Misinformation Promoting Development, In this Case Backing Library Sales and Shrinkage

•    Saturday, June 6, 2015, WNYC Reports Mayor de Blasio's "Furiously Raising Funds"- Including From Developers "Lurking Behind The Curtain" of Library Real Estate Sales- And WNYC's Money?

•    Saturday, June 6, 2015, Real Estate Deal Revelations In Scott Sherman's New "Patience and Fortitude" About NYPL Central Library Plan Fight: Observer-Owning Kushner Family In At Outset of Donnell Sale

Selling a $100 Million Plus Library For What? A Pittance! More Transparency Please.

Click to enlarge

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

That’s the mayor in 2013 as a candidate for election speaking about the tragedy of selling off and shrinking our public libraries, transforming them into real estate deals that benefit developers, not the public.  One of the libraries about which Mr. de Blasio was speaking was the Brooklyn Heights library, Brooklyn’s central destination library on Cadman Plaza West at the corner of Tillary and Clinton.  The Brooklyn Public Library is pushing a proposal to turn it into a luxury condominium tower.

Brooklyn Heights library, Brooklyn’s central destination library on Cadman Plaza West at the corner of Tillary and Clinton

The proposal involves a vastly shrunken so-called “replacement” library of minimal size.  The current library is 63,000 square feet; the proposed “replacement” just one-third, 21,000 square feet.  The current library has about 38,000 square feet above ground, the proposed “replacement” just 15,000 square feet above ground.

This coming Wednesday, June 17th, a hearing will commence the process required to decide whether to sell and shrink the Brooklyn Heights Tillary Clinton Library.  This will be the first ever hearing on such a sale because one was not required or held with respect to Donnell sold in 2007, or the now besieged 34th Street Science, Industry and Business library.  Here’s information about the 6:00 PM hearing:

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

I urge everyone who cares about this city to be there.  (This library is also intended to serve lower Manhattan.)

Probably because the sale does not make sense from the public’s point of view and is proceeding as a boondoggle hand-off to a developer, the Brooklyn Public Library and EDC, the city real estate development corporation that serves developers, is proceeding with an extreme lack of transparency.

This extreme lack of transparency extends even to BPL’s refusal to provide basic information about how much the public is losing and how little the BPL is selling this asset for, including all the costs that should be netted out of the sale.

There many things to consider about what is being lost if this essential amenity is transferred out to a developer looking to make millions, even including the park space and trees surrounding the building and the sale of the public’s light and air. (Urban renewal was once used to bring this site to a lower density in order to have that light and air.)  We have given some consideration to this before:  Tuesday, October 7, 2014, The Public Loss of Selling And Shrinking the Brooklyn Heights Library- How Great Will the Loss Be? Let's Calculate.

And the BPL has already been asked to identify the costs of selling the library which they have refused to do: Thursday, October 9, 2014, Open Letter To Brooklyn Public Library President Linda Johnson and Friday, February 6, 2015, Open Letter To Brooklyn Public Library Trustee Peter Aschkenasy Re Commitment to Provide Information About Library Sale.

Now, the weekend before the hearing, it is probably time to fill in the gap and supply, in basic bookkeeping terms, some fundamental calculations of the dollar value of the asset the BPL is selling and, in dollar terms, how that sale of this asset at a pittance, netting perhaps less than nothing, will be a loss to the public.

We also have a some new information to work with despite the BPL’s efforts to be totally opaque.

The Dollar Value of Just the Library Building Itself

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

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

Downstairs space set up to hold books for easy on-the-spot retrieval

It is therefore relatively safe to say that based on these original costs the book value of the library building alone is in the approximate neighborhood of $30 million.

That’s one starting figure. . . 

What if a new library were reconstructed in the bottom of a luxury tower?  The BPL tells us that reconstructing a new, much smaller library of only one-third size (21,000 square feet) to replace the library will cost $10 million.  But previously they said it would cost $12 million.  Making these low-ball costs all the more suspect and fanciful, the BPL is proposing to sell the library, locking in this extreme shrinkage to an exact footage, without even bothering to design a new library first (let alone engage the public in determining its library size needs).

Actually, putting this vastly shrunken 21,000 square foot library in the bottom of the luxury tower for which there are still no public designs either will probably cost more than $16 million.  Yes, $16+ million.  That’s based on the costs of “replacing” (and shrinking) the slightly larger Donnell Library.  That construction has announced overruns although it still isn’t complete and may not be complete until 2016.

That would mean that replacing the Brooklyn Heights Library full-scale in a luxury tower would cost the BPL (and the public) about $48 million.  That would wipe out entirely what the BPL is being paid to sell the library.  Why?  Because the developer is only paying the BPL a gross price (before we calculate any losses) of $52 million.  And, if the library were being replaced full-scale, all of its 63,000 square feet in the bottom of a luxury tower, the developer would be paying the BPL substantially at lot less than that $52 million gross figure.  The developer would pay less because the developer would be buying less, a smaller balance of development rights, and because it would have to bear a higher cost to build the shell in which the library would build its new space.  (According figures from the BPL’s spokesperson, the developer may be spending about $10 million now.  Three times that amount would be substantial.) 

It has long been known that the NYPL’s sale of Donnell effectively amounted to a loss of millions of dollars of public library assets.  The sale of this library is closely replicates the sale of Donnell with an overlap of people involved in the planning.

Selling public assets for the benefit of developers is more expensive than everyone might immediately suppose.  Unless the BPL plays these shell games (and that involves having to shrink the library as part of the game) it quickly becomes apparent how much the public is losing.

The BPL refuses to give figures, but if the BPL were putting a full scale replacement library in the bottom of the luxury tower it would be costing the BPL around $48 million just for the rebuilding costs . . .  And the developer would also then probably be paying far less than $30 million gross price.  Result?:A very substantial loss.

There is a much better way to evaluate the public dollar value of the building that we are losing in this sale. That’s to consider the cost of erecting a free-standing building on the site today.  One reason that’s important?: Because, whatever size library is put in the bottom of a luxury condominium, that library can never be enlarged afterward.  The current library is enlargeable: Owned by the city, the city can build on the site to enlarge the library or construct for other public uses as the city grows as it and the neighborhood is doing very fast now.

If the BPL erects a free-standing 21,000 square foot replacement library at the site of library, it would cost $20 million according to library spokesperson David Woloch (at the 6/10/2015 Sunset Park Library redevelopment meeting).  Constructing a full-scale, free-standing 63,000 square foot replacement library would cost $60 million.

One might argue, as the BPL promoting the sale no doubt would, that such a library would be newer and "state-of-the art" and that the dollar value involved would not yet be subject to any depreciation to reflect any aging of the building.  On the other hand, one of the things that is thwarting the te BPL in its arguments for selling its building to a developer is that the Brooklyn Heights library was built to last.  It's a case of: They don’t build them like they used to.  As much as the BPL would like to neglect the building and drive it into the ground, fail to clean rest rooms, or make the aspects of the building superficially unappealing, the building frustrates them with its solidity.  Crazy enough, it was meant to be still standing if there ever was a nuclear war.

The BPL has fallen all over itself in silly efforts to exaggerate the building’s current needs. Principal among these efforts has been the BPL’s refusal to repair the air conditioning and its exaggerations that fixing the air conditioning could cost almost $5 million or that making the building pristine and new again could cost around $10 million.  But the BPL has refused to release the information that is available about previous assessments that contradict what they are saying about the air conditioning repair needs.

The BPL initiated plans to turn this (and other libraries) into a real estate deal with a decision that goes back to at least 2007.  Its plan wasn’t announced until January 2013, a year before Bloomberg left office.  The air conditioning conveniently went out of commission six months before the planned announcement of sale where air conditioning problems would be cited as a reason for the sale.

$30 million? $48 million? $60 million?  Those are figures for the dollar value of the library building alone.

But you can’t get a library just for the cost of building the building.  You have to also buy the land and own the development rights. 

The Dollar Value of the Land Under the Building
   
What is the value of the land under the library that we must include as part of the dollar value of the public’s ownership of the library?

The developer is paying a gross price to the BPL of $52 million so the value of the land and development rights that must be added to value of the building is surely at least that.  But the developer isn’t paying to buy all the land or all the development rights so the actual figure is higher than that.  How much then to the $52 million should we add for this?

In addition, what the developer is paying includes a discount for other costs like the cost of demolition.  The public won’t incur any cost of demolition if it retains the library so that adds to the public value of land the public retains.  How much then to the $52 million should we add for this?

The developer is also incurring perhaps $10 million in costs to build the shell for the shrunken replacement library, in effect an additional part of the purchase price paid to the library.   How much then to the $52 million should we add for this? $10 million?

The developer must also rent space for a tiny temporary library (7,500 square feet) for the four years or so the BPL expects it may take to build a shrunken replacement.  How much then to the $52 million should we add for this?  In the case of Donnell, rent for the tiny cramped interim library beginning when Donnell closed in spring 2008 was pursuant to rental lease terms calling for “payment of $850,000 for the first year (with possible increases thereafter).”  - How much then to the $52 million should we add for this?

In the case of Donnell, outfitting that tiny cramped temporary library cost the NYPL, “nearly $5 million.”   One thing that is not yet clear at the moment is whether this outfitting expense would be a cost borne by the BPL (i.e. public), thus an additional public cost of the transaction, or by the developer, in which case it would be an extra factor raising the value of the land and development rights.

The developer is also incurring other costs in buying this land.  Contributions to politicians and elected officials including Mayor di Blasio should properly be considered an additional cost to buy the land and development rights.  When the developer pays his architect more so that his architect can send money in the mayor’s direction, that too should properly be considered an additional cost to buy the land and development rights.  How much then to the $52 million should we add for this?
  
In fact, it should not be considered that the developer is buying this as unencumbered land in the normal sense.  Because it is a library that the public values and because this deal will properly arouse anger and suspicion with the public it comes with many hurdles, many toll booths that have to be passed through paying fees to high-priced lobbyists and lawyers to sell a  narrative skewed to and paving the road for the public and their elected officials to ignore the obvious math problems associated with this shortchanging of the public.  Among other things the sale will have to go through a multi-year process where the question must be evaluated whether it is absurd to sell this public assets netting virtually nothing.  How much then to the $52 million should we add for this?

How much then is the value of the land and the development rights to the public?  The value of the land that will appreciate in the future?  The development rights that can be used for future expansion and public good?

Somewhere between $65 million and $100 million?  More?

Value of the Library Building PLUS The Library Land

The math above means that the dollar value to the public of the library plus the land it sits on with all accompanying rights is somewhere between a minimum of $95 million and a much higher figure?  That higher dollar value to the public figure could easily be $160 million or could be higher.  A higher figure won’t seem at all preposterous when you see the aggregate value for which luxury condominiums will sell.  In the case of Donnell the penthouse apartment in the 50-story luxury tower replacing Donnell is on the market for $60 million.  Several weeks ago another single lower-level condo unit in the building, 43A, sold for $20,110,437.50.  There is also a 114 guest room luxury hotel in the tower and earlier this year Chinese investors made that hotel, according to the Wall Street Journal, “the most highly valued hotel in the U.S.” after agreeing to buy it for “more than $230 million. . .  .more than $2 million a room.”

The design for the Brooklyn Heights luxury tower has yet to be released and various statements about its final true height have been misleading but one figure given in the New York Times says it will be a 38-story tower.  The developer has spoken of having extra tall ceilings to make it seem taller and give the apartments more luxurious views.

Netting the Costs Out of The Paltry Amount the Library Is getting for selling Off a $100+ Million Asset

The BPL states that it is getting a gross price of $52 million for selling and shrinking the library.  Out of this must be netted certain costs, most immediately the $16+ million to build the as-yet-undesigned “replacement” library, bring the net cash figure for selling the library down to less than $36 million.

From than $36 million much more must be subtracted.

The reduction in space will supposedly be associated with shifting the functions of the library, business and career functions that ought better to remain in growing Downtown Brooklyn, to cram them into the Grand Army Plaza library.  Will some/all of these functions actually just disappear?  No additional space will be built at the changed location so sacrifices will have to result.  It is not that many years ago a space expansion was required at the Grand Army Plaza library.  The BPL has acknowledged that cramming the functions in will entail substantial construction costs but refuses to furnish these cost to the public. At one time the BPL president Johnson said they were irrelevant and should be ignored and another time BPL spokesperson Davis Woloch said the BPL simply doesn’t know what those costs will be.  Shrinking a library before designing it?  Selling a library before knowing the costs of doing so?  Is this lack of transparency or total stupidity?

Some of the reductions at the Brooklyn Heights Tillary Clinton Library will also have to be taken up by other BPL facilities.  Are those costs and sacrifices similarly unknown and unevaluated?

There is the cost both to the public and to the BPL of keeping books off-site and moving them around and these costs can be far heftier than the BPL acknowledges.  There is the cost of moving to a temporary library.  The cost of moving back.  The possible cost of outfitting the temporary library ($5 million like Donnell?).

There is the cost to the community of going without any sort of library for a projected four years and associated disruptions.  (Donnell has turned into possibly eight years.)

These figures which the BPL will not furnish or account for could easily wipe out the paltry $36 million remaining.  It could readily adjust the miniscule “net cash” situation taking it into deep negative territory.  That’s a problem for the BPL, which is trying a divide-and-conquer, smoke-and-mirrors strategy, trying to convince other communities that they will be benefitted by the squandering of these library assets.  The BPL is trying to convince these other communities that if a library is handed out as a prize to a developer this first time with the central destination library in Downtown Brooklyn that their own neighborhood libraries won’t similarly come up somewhere, next in a public-be-damned transaction as the BPL moves down the list in its plan that we know looks at “leveraging” all its real estate assets.

Factoring In the Smaller Library In Calculating the Loss

But to be fair, the BPL is not selling off the entirety of its assets at this site when it sells the library for this shrinkage plan.  With a new library one-third the size of what exists now it may be thought of as selling off somewhere in excess of two-thirds of its assets, not the entire asset.  In excess of two-thirds because, with the development rights transferred, this library can never be enlarged again if the community grows or if the shrinkage turns out to be the mistake that most people have judged it to be.

Math-wise, in dollar value terms, selling off more that two-thirds of the library amounts, based on the previous figures, to selling off $63+ million to $106.7+ million in assets (2/3 x $95 million to $160+ million, plus an adjustment up for selling the development rights).  For this sale the library will get perhaps zero or less.

The smaller, shrunken library, forever to be a depressing reminder of this era of rampaging privatization and plunder would, albeit, have a value.  At the high end, the building’s value would be maybe the $20 million the BPL would spend if it were building a free-standing enlargeable building.  Since that’s not what the BPL is getting maybe we should subtract from that.

Added to that $20 (or less) million building value we must add some associated dollar value for part of the land.  Using the earlier figures that would come to less than $21.7 million to $33.3 million (1/3 x $65 million and $100 million, from which must be subtracted a substantial figure for the extraction of all the development rights).

In other words we would go from having a library with a dollar value to the public of between $95 million to $160+ million, to having a much smaller library with a dollar value to the public of substantially less than, at best, $41.7 million* to $53.3 million. . .

(* This figure may seem disproportionally high because it only uses the top-end figure for new construction.  Those who care about historical and landmark value are likely to view it as coming out too relatively high in the comparisons.)

. . . The bottom line is that we would have sold off $63+ million to $160+ million in assets either at a public loss or netting virtually nothing.. . . Bottom line, in a time of increasing wealth, income and power disparities, this proposal will amount to a huge transfer of capital assets from the public realm to the private.

I believe I have not been unfair in supplying any of these numbers.  I think the unfairness is that the BPL has refused to provide such numbers.

Book ends?:  Brooklyn's two central destination libraries, the Downtown Brooklyn Heights Library and the Grand Army Plaza Library, were both designed by the same famed architect, Francis Keally.

Affordable Public Housing?

The library location of the proposed new luxury tower- Downtown and on the edge of fashionable, historic Brooklyn Heights- Beside a park and near the Promenade

One last factor in the mix?  Like the building of many other luxury towers the developer will seek to build a bigger, taller luxury tower by building, “poor door” fashion, a few “affordable” housing units (114 altogether) in very different locations in the Community Board 2 district.  It is another example of using people’s desperation for affordable housing as bait to strip communities of their assets and drive wedges between different groups.  In doing the calculus, what sort of value should be given to these units?  Good question.  But, if you want to ask that question, then you need to ask another question: Should our libraries be sold off to produce a few units of “affordable” housing?  Because, if so, there is enough need for affordable housing to start selling off all our public assets and libraries would wind up being only a small part of the total inventory of public assets that would be seized and privatized before that need was ever satisfied

"Poor Door": One location where a few "affordable" units would be built resulting in. . .

Another location where a few "affordable" units would be built

Meanwhile, in other privatizing plans very reminiscent of these attacks on libraries, the Mayor is looking to sell our public housing assets.  That includes proposing to shed 14,000 units of public housing from the inventory.  Well after we loose all those units we could pick up few again by selling all the libraries?

Who benefits from these shell games in the end?  Surely not the public.

BPL’s Bklyn BookMatch- A Match For The Human Race’s Book Future?: Electronic Books and Robot Librarians?

Brooklyn Public Library president Linda E. Johnson envisions staff reductions if her idea of a “new” state-of-the-art Brooklyn Library is ever built, not surprising since the “new” library she wants to “replace” the exiting one would be a mere fraction of the current library’s size.  Such staff reductions would follow on the heels of staff reductions at the BPL and a switching away from professional library staff that has been going on for a long time now. Librarians who once ran libraries have been replaced with “site managers” which sounds more like a real estate term. The BPL has also shifted away, in general, from hiring professional trained librarians, replacing them with lower-level clerks.

Ms. Johnson said that she did not know exactly how many fewer librarians would work at a smaller Brooklyn Heights Library in Downtown Brooklyn, that “the numbers have yet to be determined," but that her hope is that when built the "new building will be a model of efficiency" with a reduced staff that would not have to compensate for the drawbacks of dealing with a library that was of an "improperly" large size.

But does Ms. Johnson (problematically not a librarian herself) even know what a librarian should be, what functions they perform by being on site?  At the BPL’s September 16, 2014 trustees meeting, Ms. Johnson and her staff proudly unveiled a way to replace on-site reference librarians with an electronic service substitute, a sort of virtual reference librarian system that can respond to a patron's inquiry, and by virtue of calculating "appeal factors" (BPL’s terminology to describe the service) will tell e-mailers what books they want to read with a week's turnaround time.

Here is a quote from the presentation given the trustees:

You don't usually get this chance to have such a conversation with someone at the reference library desk.

Of course, as you are not face to face with a live person this won't be exactly such a chance either, but it goes along with how we shrink libraries for real estate deals.  The  BPL says it's recommended that the responding e-librarians try to make these responses "as personable as possible."

How will this work?  You might stroll into your local library to begin this computerized interaction to help find and discover what books you want to read.  Linda Johnson’s vision of any library into which you might stroll is a place from which physical books will soon almost entirely disappear. Books take up space and, when they disappear, libraries can be made much smaller, facilitating selling off their real estate, like with the Brooklyn Heights Library, the Donnell Library or the NYPL’s Central Library Plan (derailed at the moment).

If you stroll into a bookless library for your computerized interaction you won’t have the other ways of selecting books available to you.  You won’t be able to browse the shelves or discover that a book you really want but didn’t know about is “adjacent to the book” you thought you wanted to find (“it’s never the book you want, it’s the book beside the book.”). You won’t find the book you didn’t yet know you wanted because it luckily attracted your attention by being  unusually and promisingly fat sitting on the shelf, because it was unusually thin, because it was lovingly worn out, and unusually old.  You won't find it because it was in sparkling just-arrived condition, or because it caught your eye on the reshelving cart or as a librarian reshelved it because somebody else hot on the trail of the same kinds of things you might be looking for might just have used it.  You won’t start up a conversation because you have bumped into someone else with your interests wandering in the same section.  There will be none of this kind of `serendipity’ (if that’s what one should call it). And it's unlikely you’ll take home a book home from that bookless library that same day.

You might not choose to go into the library at all for your computerized interaction, the benefit of ever visiting that physical library perhaps being minimal, unless you are one of the 27% of New Yorkers that the NYPL estimates are currently on the other side of the digital divide and are without broadband internet access.  If you don't have your own internet access you may still be impelled to visit a physical library.

But where does this vaporous e-relationship go from here (even as we might have to struggle to describe what “here” is):

    •    Maybe, the beginning is that the e-responding “reference librarian” is in some (central?) Brooklyn location from which all such inquiries from Brooklynites get answered.
    •    The three New York City library systems, the BPL covering Brooklyn, the Queens Library covering Queens, and the NYPL covering Manhattan the Bronx and Staten Island too, have been in talks to coordinate and consolidate operations.  Would this electronic service not seem a service high on the list for such consolidation of operations?  Where will the e-responses be generated from then?
    •    At the BPL trustees meeting it was noted that the BPL was only one such library in the country launching such a system now, that other library systems are doing similar things.  Maybe then, very soon, all these systems can consolidate.  Then the e-responses to Brooklynites can come from someplace in the Mid-West where the cost of living is cheaper and salaries lower.
     •    But we have seen such out-sourcing in the past and what has ultimately happened often is that the work has been outsourced to foreign countries like India where, while many people still speak and read English, the salaries are still even markedly lower.
     •    But, would our libraries still want to continue to run these contracted-out services themselves at all?  The New York City’s library system administrators are clearly bowing to the influence of money and money-influenced politics and elected officials when they plan to sell public libraries to benefit private real estate developers.  Isn't it likely that library system administrators of such a mind set would be convinced to simply contract out these services to the private sector?  Doesn’t Amazon have an an algorithmic advice infrastructure already set up to assist people in deciding what they want to read?  Wouldn’t Amazon be the perfect candidate to take over the whole system?  If that happened, the Washington Post, now owned by Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, who acquired that newspaper at a premium, could then write in the paper's style section a clever and cheeky little article about how state-of-the art and efficient this new Amazon service was.  Truly, mightn't Amazon know best that “Customers Who Read This Item Also Read. . . .”
     •      New York library administrators continue to push to overcome public resistance as they seek to shift patrons away from physical books and over to the electronic books.  Amazon can supply those books and that way Amazon can keep track of each page you read on your Kindle and how long you spend reading it and. . . . that way Amazon can make very good recommendations.
   •    Will it be actual professional reference librarians who provide these services in the future?   . . . Or will there be shortcuts?  Maybe even the obvious ultimate shortcut: Perhaps, after the system has made do for a time with workers in India (that did or, like Ms. Johnson, didn’t spend time in school to claim library degrees), the system will progress to what could be the inevitable next step. . .  the e-responders need not be human beings at all!  With a few of those Amazon-copyrighted algorithms mashed up with some Artificial Intelligence programs there could be a set-up that works beautifully with the “bots” that these days roam our virtual universe without our being able to tell the difference.

Is there anything wrong with all this?  Can’t we simply hail it as the marvel of efficiency that it probably and most certainly is?

The book collections of New York’s libraries used to be curated by librarians assigned to the different area libraries who got to know their communities and would attend book-fair events to assess, based on their familiarity with their patrons, what books should be added to that particular library’s collection.  More recently, decisions about what books will be made available in local libraries around the city are being made more `efficiently’ from a central administrative location. It's done based on call slip data that can be aggregated and then the frequency with which a book is borrowed stands in for its value.

When City Council member Ben Kallos met with Citizens Defending Libraries (as a co-founder of Citizens Defending Libraries I was part of that meeting) he identified a pitfall with this approach: At one point he had been involved in efforts to substantially augment the supply of Japanese language books in the Roosevelt Island Library.  The library administration officials soon wanted to get rid of the books again. . .  Because there were no call slips showing that the community was borrowing the books.  The books were, in fact, being used, Kallos explained, but due to cultural difference they were being used by patrons visiting the library and reshelving the books after reading them, not thinking in terms of taking them out of the library.  The library was regarded as the place to do one’s reading of library books.

In what is now known as the slow food movement we speak increasingly and ever more universally of the importance of food being grown locally and as having a “terroir,” a term once more often used narrowly to describe how the taste of wine reflected the special characteristics infused by where the grapes used to make a wine were grown.  Is it possible that when it comes to the brain food of books and libraries that this concept applies as well? Could it apply to an even greater degree?   Or is the importance of `locality' reserved for other things?  As far as I know, “location, location, location” is still the motto of the real estate industry 

Let me drum up some gloom.

A couple of weeks ago I went to the first day of a two-day conference held at Cooper Union on the dystopian aspects and perfidious promises of technology (Techno-Utopianism and the Fate of the Earth).  The conference organizers managed to put together an impressive 24 hours worth of speakers (Bill McKibben and Ralph Nader were featured Saturday night) on subjects that were individually highly fascinating, but in the aggregate bleakly depressing, especially given the warnings being dispensed about everything from Monsanto’s Genetically Modified Organism strategies, to synthetic biology, to the Genetic Redesign of Human Beings. . 

.  Some of the themes and insights discussed were how techo-fixes are destined to disappoint and lead ever onward to the need for more techo-fixes (Michael Huesemann), and how illusory technical “progress” has substituted as a distraction for what once was the goal of social progress (John M. Greer).

Many of the speakers came back to certain common refrains like how technology can lead to massive and rapid societal dislocations (corporate land grabs in Africa and third world countries- Anuradha Mittal- or replacing dairy farmers with factories that produce synthetic milk from vats of genetically altered yogurt- Jim Thomas) and how those in control and already at the pinnacles of power regularly forerun the game, steering the promise of technology (or often just masquerades of its promise- GMO’s that don’t really produce more food or are not close to being off the drawing board, “yellow rice” that does not actually supply vitamins better than alternatives) to seize and redistribute even more power and wealth to themselves.*  These two things, dislocations and increased imbalances of wealth and power, are often related.

(*  It is interesting to note that, according to one speaker at the conference, Clive Hamilton, the same companies that spend to heavily sponsor climate science denial are also investing in and promoting “geoengineering” schemes to artificially cool down a warmed-up planet like pumping sulfur into the upper atmosphere. . . Talk about the your techno-fixes coming with awful downsides and unforeseeable ramifications!-  You mean it's not just satire?)

The comparative superiority and reliability of the natural and organically evolved existing order of things was also frequently mentioned, together with observations of how technicians tend to ignore such superiorities with anthropocentric hubris.  Efforts to de-extinct the Passenger Pigeon, likely to be futile, are phenomenally expensive and resource-absorbing compared to preserving existing threatened species (David Ehrenfeld) . . .  Aquanautic swarming robots designed to chop up jellyfish that clog and shut down nuclear power plants around the world (Eileen Crist) are a side-show compared to the global warming and overfishing that cause these exploding populations that some fear may soon take over the oceans entirely.

As we ascend into the techosphere of an ethereal ethernet existence does the concept of place, physical existence and physical interactions fall by the wayside, no longer important?  That’s a hard question.

Last month I attended WNYC/WQXR’s Community Advisory Board meeting and Graham Parker, General Manager and Vice President of WQXR, spoke about his goal for WQXR, the New York classical music radio station, to succeed as a worldwide radio station:.  He referred to “grand ambitions” to be “the Number One brand in classical music” with many listeners already in Ireland, Japan, Korea and China.  He cited a recent 19% growth in international listeners, and a 34% growth in national users.  This is an example of “placelessness,” of, as Mr. Parker put it, succeeding “way beyond our terrestrial borders.” At the same time Mr. Parker expressed optimism about fulfilling that ambition because, based in New York (an example of “placeness”), WQXR was well-situated to do so:   "New York is the best place to launch yourself from, into a national or international market.  We’ve got the best of everything in this city, and we’ve got the access to it."
    
For better or worse, another aspect of this is that WQXR views itself as competing with every other classical music station in the world.  That competition may make for better quality and increase the variety of high-quality offerings that listeners who are able to roam an entire globe of offerings can choose from, but, conversely, it also can ultimately diminish who, on the other side of this equation, gets to participate in accessing the global audiences.  A classical listener listening to another classical music station is not listening to WQXR and, vice versa, a listener to WQXR elsewhere on some far away spot of the globe is not listening to their local station.

It is akin to the situation with what have been termed "Massive Open Online Courses" or "MOOCs"  These can be viewed as a tool for democratizing higher education, making the instruction of excellent university professors available to multitudes world-wide at little or virtually no seeming cost to the immediate beneficiaries.  But in “Who Owns the Future?” author Jaron Lanier raises concerns.  There are “qualms about mono-culture” tied in with the fact that you are playing a high-stakes winner-take-all star system game.  He also wonders whether:

. . .on-line efforts of this sort could create siren servers, even nonprofit ones, which could end up undermining the finances and security of academics. . .

. . .  Students at colleges ranked lower than Stanford would tune in to Stanford seminars, and gradually wonder why they’re paying their local, lower-ranked academics at all.  If locals are to remain valuable once a globalized star system comes into being over the ‘net, it can only be because they are present and interactive.

But online experts can also be made virtually present and interactive. . .  Artificial intelligence can animate a simulated tutor. . .

Why should we keep on paying for colleges?  Why pay [to support] a privileged class of middle-class people? . .

* * * * 

This is a pattern we’ll see over and over again. . . You get an incredible bargain up front. . , but in the long term you also face reduced job prospects.  In this case. .  fewer academic jobs. .

. . .Get educated for free. . But don’t plan on a job as an educator.

He also observes: "digital networks have thus far been mostly applied to reduce [the] benefits of locality," the ability to be a "local star" knowing, and locally serving with particularity a local neighborhood.


Notwithstanding, I have a certain love of technology so I don't want to be overly negative.

And It would be unfair of me to present theories about where the future of electronically accessed off-site reference librarians might take us without first finding out the experience that this service presents now.  Accordingly, I decided to try it out.

The Bklyn BookMatch site presents a form with the questions (bolded below) to which I responded as set forth below:

Are you looking for any specific reading recommendations? If so, please explain below. Otherwise, please share the titles, authors and/or types of books you enjoy, and why: *

I have found extremely enlightening books about how we collectively create value in society, culturally, economically, technologically, and politically, largely through what we share and the ways we interact, how the multiplicity and variety of those interactions accelerate and contribute to advancement, essentially why "civilization" and "city" as words share the same route.

I seek out books for insight about the world that will, hopefully, improve my instincts (escaping or countering pulls in wrong directions) and equip me with tools for my own participation in that dynamic, hopefully responsibly and justly. Reiterating somewhat, I am attracted to ideas about the importance of the public realm, the public commons, the need to respect and protect it, and the rules humankind makes up, democracy included, in efforts to shape our shared society even as the world organically self-organizes itself.

Though civilization may represent what humankind complexly unites to create, I have found terrifically consonant edification in books reminding us that the natural realm is foundationally shared too, communally by all the planet's species, with convincing analysis that economics and ecology, functioning with similar overlapping principles, ultimately meld to erase dividing lines when it comes to establishing the interactive balances essential to thrive or survive.

Topics of particular interest: Communications industry, concepts of property and forms of ownership, money in politics and reforms to address it, organic development, and checks and balances on power, hubris and imbalanced dominions.

        Titles and authors I enjoy:

"The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires," by Tim Wu. I enjoy its brilliant illustration of how, without corrective intervention, the communications industries bend toward monopoly or monopsony with probably detrimental cultural, political and societal consequence.

"Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership," by Lewis Hyde. It convincingly makes the case for the societal advancement and organic benefits that derive from knowledge that's shared as part of a broad and extensive commons.

All of Jane Jacobs' books, including the most obscure, "The Question of Separatism: Quebec and the Struggle over Sovereignty." Jacobs is more famous for a single book, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," but I especially like most of her more developed work: "The Economy of Cities," "Cities and the Wealth of Nations," "Systems of Survival" and "The Nature of Economies." I enjoy Jacobs' rigor and preference to learn from the closely observed rather than through the received prisms of the theories of experts.

As more elucidation about Jacobs, I enjoyed the book by Jacobs' protege, Roberta Brandes Gratz: "The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs."

"The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York," by Robert A. Caro. Caro's perpetual preoccupation with the intricate working of power was first addressed to this era of urban change.

"Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (The History of New York City)," by Mike Wallace. I live in New York, so knowing about its history informs what I observe around me.

"The Federalist Papers," by assorted Founding Fathers, John Jay, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton. How important the understanding and thinking about the need for checks and balances on human faults and frailty and what mechanisms will work.

"Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It," by Lawrence Lessig. A study of how money in politics delivers bad decisions and outcomes and how the problem of that money can be counteracted.

"Who Owns the Future?" By Jaron Lanier. This book fascinatingly grapples with the anomaly of how wealth in the technological era is created, in a broad-based way, via the contributions of all of us, and yet technology concentrates wealth in a few, economically squeezing the middle class to an ever greater degree economically and in humanistic terms.

Examples: Accelerating technological improvements mean "that more and more things can be done practically for free . . . When machines get incredible cheep to run, people seem correspondingly expensive." and "If observation of you yields data that makes it easier for a robot to seem [like you and replace you] then you ought to be owed money for [that]. This is such a simple starting point that I find it credible, and I hope to persuade you about that as well."

"The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution," by Francis Fukuyama. Looking at how we evolve better, stable governance.

"The Wealth of Nations," by Adam Smith. A seminal work on how capitalism works all on its own and, also, how it doesn't.

"The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City," by Richard Sennett. Sennett builds on Jane Jacobs' theme that humankind's attraction to ordering the world can be unhealthy and stifle growth.

I also like books that provide insight into real people exercising important influences today, often finding them of increased interest when they are older and overlooked, perhaps written for a different intended purpose. In that category I would put-

"Bloomberg by Bloomberg," by Michael R. Bloomberg with help from Matthew Winkler. The book, released as Bloomberg prepared to launch into politics, contains an intriguing admission that when giving money to "charities" Bloomberg always considered what he was getting back in exchange.

"More Than They Bargained For- The Rise and Fall of Korvettes," by Isadore Barmash. A postmortem of how the once-successful Korvettes' chain devolved into the failure of a sell off of its substantial well-located real estate assets. Important because one of the characters in the saga is Marshal Rose, current NYC real estate magnate and simultaneously a trustee of the NYPL that is now looking to sell-off and shrink libraries as real estate deals.

Are there any authors and/or types of books that you don't like? Why?

“Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York,” by Hilary Ballon.  This “reexamination of Moses” comes across as too conveniently aligned with a suspect agenda to justify a return to large scale top-down planning.*

(*  Submitting this particular response was difficult.  The answer to the question had to be limited in length and I kept getting back messages I had to shorten it to be under the "maximum 255 characters long" even when I was under that character.  When I got down to 196 characters the program accepted my answer.)

Here is the response I got from the electronically available reference librarian.  Portions of it, as you likely can tell, were cut and pasted from elsewhere (usually text available in multiple locations on the internet including publishers websites) and I have highlighted those sections hyper-linking back to such other locations where the text can be found. Only one book description could not be found on Amazon, the one about U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor.  Amazon's description was, in this case, a somewhat customized version.  I did not, as predicted, have to wait a whole week to get my response back from email address: `AskALibrarian@oclc.org'.  I sent in my request middle of the day Friday and the response came back to me at the end of the day the following Monday.

Greetings from Brooklyn Public Library

Dear Mr. White,

Thank you for using Bklyn BookMatch! Based on your interests, I’ve created a customized reading list for you. The books I've selected cover a wide range of topics and interests, much like your impeccable reading taste.  In the list below you will find titles focused on technology, economics, the natural world, and more.  Please feel free to respond with any feedback.  Enjoy!

Based on your interest in economics and politics:

1.  Capitalism: A Ghost Story by Arundhati Roy

Capitalism: A Ghost Story examines the dark side of democracy in contemporary India, and shows how the demands of globalized capitalism has subjugated billions of people to the highest and most intense forms of racism and exploitation.

Based on your interest in economics and technology:

2.  Too Big To Know by David Weinberger

This groundbreaking book shakes the foundations of our concept of knowledge, from the role of facts to the value of books and the authority of experts, providing a compelling vision of the future of knowledge in a connected world.

Based on your interest in important people and their impact in today's world:

3.  My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor

With startling candor and intimacy, Sonia Sotomayor recounts her life from a Bronx housing project to the federal bench, a progress that is testament to her extraordinary determination and the power of believing in oneself. She writes of her precarious childhood and the refuge she took with her passionately spirited paternal grandmother. She describes her resolve as a young girl to become a lawyer, and how she made this dream become reality: valedictorian of her high school class, summa cum laude at Princeton, Yale Law, prosecutor in the Manhattan D.A.'s office, private practice, federal district judge before the age of forty. She writes about her deeply valued mentors, about her failed marriage, about her cherished family of friends. Through her still-astonished eyes, America's infinite possibilities are envisioned anew in this warm and honest book, destined to become a classic of self-discovery and self-invention, alongside Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father.

Based on your interest in economics and technology:

4.  Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy by Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig, the reigning authority on intellectual property in the Internet age, spotlights the newest and possibly the most harmful culture war—a war waged against our kids and others who create and consume art. America’s copyright laws have ceased to perform their original, beneficial role: protecting artists’ creations while allowing them to build on previous creative works. In fact, our system now criminalizes those very actions.

Based on your interest in the natural world and its connection to man and humankind:

5.  The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates by Frans de Waal

In this lively and illuminating discussion of his landmark research, esteemed primatologist Frans de Waal argues that human morality is not imposed from above but instead comes from within. Moral behavior does not begin and end with religion but is in fact a product of evolution...Rich with cultural references and anecdotes of primate behavior, The Bonobo and the Atheist engagingly builds a unique argument grounded in evolutionary biology and moral philosophy. Ever a pioneering thinker, de Waal delivers a heartening and inclusive new perspective on human nature and our struggle to find purpose in our lives.

I've also made a booklist for you in our online catalog: http://bit.ly/1xy8Zek.  You'll notice a few more titles not mentioned above - these are just a few more recommendations.  Once you sign in to your account, you can easily place holds on any or all of these books. 

Please don't hesitate to reply to this message letting us know what you think about my suggestions and this service. Happy reading!

My response?  It's below.  I had to be honest:

I love these recommendations.  Thank you.

Interestingly, Sonya Sotomayor was a board member at one of the government agencies where I once worked, and, at one point, I wrote an article in the form of an "open letter" to her about eminent domain abuse.

As for the bonobos, that is relevant to some of Francis Fukuyama's discussion.  I recall, we currently believe that chimps and bonobos are both more closely related to humans than they are to each other-  Hmm.  Figure that out.  (Link below.) Francis Fukuyama focused in on the behavior of chimps and might have gone in a somewhat different direction in his thoughts if he'd focused on bonobos.

This librarian sounds like a nice and interesting person.  Wouldn't you like to meet her in person?

The email I got back gave her name and specified her title as "Librarian, Brooklyn Public Library."  Here are some other things I learned about her.  Her email told me something that I had not gleaned from BPL president Linda Johnson's presentation to the BPL trustees: She was responding using an OCLC ("Online Computer Library Center, Inc.") email address, not a BPL email address.  On the web page that popped up for OCLC it says about OCLC: "The world's libraries connected. . . . OCLC members make a collective impact, worldwide."

Disappointed, I thought that maybe my friendly assigned reference librarian wasn't a New Yorker and didn't work for the BPL.  But on Facebook I learned hearteningly that she lives in New York City (likely even in Brooklyn!- Williamsburg to be exact), came from Chicago, Illinois after studying Library Science at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  From Twitter I learned she is a poet.  A real person living in my city doing real things!  She is even a trained librarian working as a librarian, but apparently she doesn't work on staff for the BPL.  She works at Teachers College, Columbia University.  Maybe my quick response from her was by reason of her weekend moonlighting.

In promoting a just announced (but, like many others, very long in the works) plan to to redevelop the Sunset Park Branch Library into a "Mixed Use Real Estate Opportunity" the BPL is having conversations directed at the local community promoting this proposed redevelopment by telling people, in part, that the the development can be viewed as a jobs program (30-35 construction jobs during an estimated two years of construction) because construction means jobs.  But, think, if the administration of libraries can be conceived as a jobs program as the BPL was making the case, why not consider that the jobs that librarians do are important jobs to keep and provide. . . worth publicly paying for even when that means setting aside worship of technical efficiencies?

During the Great Depression the WPA (the Works Progress Administration) hired artists and theatrical performers to ply their trade, essentially almost to be themselves.  Mightn't it, in this day's challenging economy, make sense for the government to hire and pay people just to be smart, well read, informed and, without an agenda, informatively out and about and intermingling with our local communities, particularly with the goal of being in service to others, those most intent on self-educating themselves?

Would it be important to insist that these people focus on being "efficient" in their interactions, doing as much as possible with as few bodies as possibe?  Did we/should we have demanded this of the WPA artists and performers?

`Efficiency' may not be all that it's cracked up to be.  The great urbanist thinker Jane Jacobs, a proponent of the benefits if diverse, differentiating and naturally evolving development in books like "The Nature of Economies" looked askance at the "supposed efficiency" of monopolies and, with Detriot being one of her examples, she denounced specialized efficiency at the expense of diversity, considering it a prelude to economic stagnation.  Economies that sacrifice ample diversity, like ecosystems that do so, are less adaptable, less stable, less resourceful, less able to improvise, less able to develop and evolve.  To Jacobs, an economy with few sorts of niches for people's different skills, however efficient, is one that suffers impoverishment.

The proposed redevelopment of the Sunset Park Library weeks ago is the first time such an announced redevelopment of a library by the BPL has involved a proposed increase of library space rather than another shrinkage since Citizens Defending Libraries has been on the scene shedding light on the BPL's real estate ambitions.  It would be flattering to think that the increase in size as part of the proposal is even a reaction to knowing that Citizens Defending Libraries is on the scene.

Ironically, the BPL is hinting that it may give the Sunset Park community what it wants, a library that might well wind up being larger than the small size down to which the BPL is concurrently proposing to shrink the central destination Brooklyn Heights Library.  The Sunset Park community wants a new library that is two stories above ground, and for that space to be more than the 17,000 square feet the BPL initially proposed.  The folks in Sunset Park say they miss the two-story, above-ground Carnegie library the neighborhood once had that was larger than the box that has replaced it there now.  The BPL is responding that it sees the sense of what the community is requesting and is looking to accede if it can secure some increased funds.  By contrast the BPL is planning that the Brooklyn Heights Library would consist of only 15,000 square feet of such above-ground space with 6,000 square of ancillary below-ground space.

While the Sunset Park library is proposed to have more space, the BPL has not fully updated its sales pitch and is using many of the same words to describe why its hurried priority must be redevelopment of the Sunset Park library to make it `work better.'  (The BPL currently now rents out space in the library to Workforce1 that it could easily reclaim to expand without redevelopment.)   If you know the code words, the same words and overlapping phrases may hint at the same kind of staff and librarian reductions for Sunset Park as the BPL envisions for Brooklyn Heights:  "probably the most important issue . . .  this current layout. .  is not adequate to the services that are needed in the community today. . .  we need more technology."  The BPL spokesperson also again referred cryptically to existing space that "is not usable."  That phrase, used quite frequently in PR promotions for shrinking libraries, seems to refer often to space used by librarians and for them to exist in.

Said BPLs spokesperson to the community (emphasis supplied):

This branch isn't laid out in an ideal fashion.  I don't want to. . .  [He then named two Librarians by name], they deserve lot's of space, but unfortunately, in this branch right now, there's probably more staff space than is ideal.  So if we can start from scratch we can get that mixture, that balance of staff space and public space.  We can probably get a little closer to where we should be.  Again, we have the opportunity to create a modern, technology rich and welcoming library.

Well now that I have my book recommendations from my email pen pal of a librarian I'll have to plan to get the books.  But since books, like librarians, are disappearing from the library and are not available at the library until ordered (like Amazon), I'll have to order them to come in to my library from where the BPL now keeps its much smaller collection that mysteriously `floats.'  The BPL administration says the `floating' books not at the libraries you visit can be available with “usually a week’s turnaround”  (that's a week after the previous week's expected turnaround with the email reference librarian).  The time might even be less, but reports are coming in that it often takes nine to eleven days to get ordered books.

I'll try to wait as efficiently as possible.