Un-Change That You Can Believe In?: Is The Brooklyn Heights Association Going To Endorse Greater Density In The Neighborhood As A Way For Its Neighborhood To Regain Historic Character? (It’s Being Discussed.)

The corner of Montague and Henry Streets: On left, the current problematic vista; On right, the view as some Brooklyn Heights Association trustees may hope that it will be approved, restoring the neighborhood's historic flavor. (Click to enlarge for better consideration)  Note: The rendering of this proposal triples the office real estate brokerage space of Brown Harris Stevens, a not unlikely result of the addition of this much real estate to the neighborhood.

Nothing is official or publicly disclosed yet, but rumors are out that there is dissension and disagreement at the Brooklyn Heights Association as a result of an idea proposed by an emergent faction of the board that is raising hackles with the others.  It all stems from the fact that there is a sense that the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood, the first neighborhood in New York City to be designated an historic district, has fast been losing its historic character.  - Oh for history’s sake!

How can Brooklyn Heights regain, restore and reestablish the historic flavor and character that has made it so deliciously revered as one of the city’s most special areas to stroll through and that invariably attracts and is recommended to tourists and to visitors coming from everywhere?

Brooklyn Heights historic area boundaries.

The reason the question has presented itself in a nagging way that is far from easy to sidestep is because of the visual intrusions of the tall glass towers shrieking modernity that have recently been built ringing the perimeter of what is officially the protected historic part of the neighborhood.  The protected part of the neighborhood is actually smaller than many presume, ending, for example on Montague Street at the boundary of Clinton Street. The poster child for such “back to the impending future” intrusions is the super-tall luxury condominium tower, replacing what was once Brooklyn's second most important library at the corner of Tillary and Clinton where they intersect at Cadman Plaza West.

That tower, developed by David Kramer and his Hudson Companies, was endorsed and promoted by the Brooklyn Heights Association.  Destruction of the public library to create the tower also created a financial windfall for the neighborhood’s elite Saint Ann’s School, which was, no doubt, influential in the politics that sent the tower soaring up to dominate the skies of the historic neighborhood from all sorts of vantages.  It is possible that when the BHA endorsed the luxury tower they never realized just how visually dominant it would be in so much of the neighborhood.

But now, according to the rumors, one emerging faction of the Heights Association is pointing out that, while the tower is seen looming from many of the key streets and intersections of Brooklyn Heights, there are places where it can’t be seen because view of it is still blocked by the older historic buildings making up the fabric of the neighborhood since it was officially designated historic by the Landmarks Commission on November 23, 1965.  The same faction of the BHA (basically the core group that lobbied to sell the library) are pointing out that the visual intrusions of the tower are not always that bad, and are they are saying that there is, in this observation, the seeds of a solution to make the unsightly tower less “sightly” . . . Or, if you will, make the tower less Brooklyn Heights Historic District “sitely.”

Other candidates for “historical enlargement”: At left, the creamy white Supreme Court Appellate Division building on Pierrepont and Monroe Streets; and, at right, a series of townhouses on Monroe Street that no longer feel cloistered away from the bustle of the moderns age. ( The Supreme Court building attracted film crews for many an episode “Law and Order.”  If the success of “Law and Order” can result in six spin-off series, which it did, why can’t recognition of the attractiveness of the Supreme Court building equally justify addition of another half dozen similarly beautiful floors?  The demand will be to fill those extra floors with condos, not more justice manufacturing.)

The answer being proposed is to bring greater density to the Brooklyn Heights and allow the truly historic buildings of Brooklyn Heights to express their historic influence more fully by building extra floors matching and multiplying the same historic flavor those buildings contribute to the neighborhood now.  If those buildings rise up enough extra floors they can blot out the visibility of Kramer's One Clinton luxury condo tower and perhaps also diminish the conspicuousness of the other glass-glazed luxury hulks that have bounded up into the skies elsewhere on the neighborhood’s periphery.

With nobody currently on the board of the BHA officially talking, the internal politics and arguments being exchanged are, as yet a little unclear.  However, Hank (Henry) Gutman, a former BHA board member and currently on the board of the Brooklyn Bridge Park corporation and on the board of the Brooklyn Public Library that sold the Business, Career and Education federal depository library to create Kramer's luxury tower, seems to have an inside line on the development oriented thinking that is behind the proposal.  Gutman says “allowing the extra density unlocks the real estate value historic neighborhood designations invariable trap unused in their neighborhoods, and that unlocking of value will serve as an engine for quick restorative development that will assist the Heights neighborhood to regain its historic flavor.”

Gutman said that, if the Heights Association proposes this solution, he strongly believes the de Blasio administration will accede and work with the BHA to implement it.  Among other things, says Gutman:

This is consistent with other goals of the city.  The city needs to grow and become more dense.  It’s a city policy to add density along subway lines and at the transit hubs where those lines converge.  Right now Brooklyn Heights, sitting atop the convergence of a huge proportion of the city’s subway lines, is hogging our subway lines without giving any density back.  It’s time for the neighborhood to give back! 

Gutman is hopeful about the future of similar proposals in the future: “If implemented successfully in Brooklyn Heights, I am sure it’s the kind of thing that can be programmatically replicated in other neighborhoods throughout the city,” says Gutman.

Another thing to think about says Gutman is how this would address what he considers the almost inherently elitist nature of historic neighborhoods.  “Nobody is making historic neighborhoods anymore,” says Gutman, “yet, given the crap people are building these days [Gutman wouldn’t comment on Kramer’s work], everybody wants to live in them.   Given the automatic scarcity that results, the neighborhoods become enclaves for the wealthy who outbid everyone else.” . .

. . . “This is the solution,” says Gutman, “now, by adding greater density, we will be building more historic places where people can live.”  . . . . And, says Gutman, it sort of goes along with something else he has always liked to say, which is“if you know how to create history, you'll be a winner when it's all said and done.”

Is this a proposal that the Brooklyn Heights Association will be promoting?  As far as anyone knows, it’s only being discussed at this point, but what may the clincher for endorsement by the BHA is another related proposal that would be combined with it . . .

. . .  The extra density to hide modern towers proposal would create multiple extra tall buildings of a historic character throughout the Heights neighborhood.  They would all have additional steel columns to ensure support for the extra floors, and could perhaps also have more.  There is a feeling that, if done right, the new taller-than-average historic character towers scattered throughout the neighborhood could also become the supports upon which to rest a new, but temporary overhead bypass for the BQE to allow the repairs to the BQE's existing structure without tearing down the promenade.  That would substitute for the Department of Transportation’s (hard to believe) plan for repair and modification of the Brooklyn Heights Promenade that involves six years during which a six-lane highway would run along the Heights in place of the promenade.

A red line tracks how a BQE bypass over taller "extra historical" buildings could cut through the historic district to save the promenade from the DOT plan.  Once upon a time, Robert Moses wanted to run the BQE through the middle of Brooklyn Heights which would have involved tearing down much of historic Brooklyn Heights.  In contradistinction, this plan, with a similar BQE route, builds up and creates more of the historic district.

The BHA has said it very much opposes the reviled DOT plan.  Gutman thinks the historic towers supporting a bypass would be a much better plan.  And City Councilman Steve Levin, who usually keeps his constituents guessing about his actually stance on development issues until the very last minute (and who says he opposes the DOT promenade plan) has, in this case, already said, it's “exactly the plan to replace the DOT plan” that he has been “on the look out for.”

I wanted to get this article out as soon as possible to let New Yorkers know what is being considered as soon as possible, but this publication may be a little premature.  Gutman thinks the BHA factions are about to resolve their differences and says he thinks the BHA may come out to announce a more definitive proposal, as soon as today, April 1st.

Example of how "extra historical" buildings could support BQE bypass.

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.

Open Letter To New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan Regarding Non-disclosures By Ginia Bellafante and the New York Times In Connection With Article About Proposed Sale And Shrinkage of Brooklyn Heights Library

The following is an open letter I wrote to the New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan concerning an article for which I was interviewed as co-founder of Citizens Defending Libraries by that article's author Ginia Bellafante.

* * * *
To: Margaret Sullivan, Public Editor, New York Times
Public@nytimes.com

Dear Ms. Sullivan,

Subject: Non-disclosure of reporter's connection to significant aspect relevant to article about proposed sale and shrinkage of major Brooklyn Library, that private school will benefit very substantially behind the scenes.

I am writing to call to your attention to and ask for your evaluation as New York Times Public Editor of an article written by a New York Times reporter, Ginia Bellafante, with a slant that may not have been discernable to many New York Times readers, but should be very discernible to those who know the facts concerning the subject as well as I believe Ms. Bellafante did.  Ms. Bellafante's editor observes that the article reflects an "opinion" Ms. Bellafante's formed about a very important public issue, whether a major public asset should be sold for redevelopment, the Brooklyn Heights Library, the central destination library in downtown Brooklyn, proposed to be replaced by a luxury tower with a drastically shrunken library at its base.

The article is: Brooklyn Libraries, Development and Misdirected Fear, July 10, 2015

Ms. Bellafante left out of her article many facts, some might think oddly or preferentially, that would very likely have caused her readers to form an opinion, contrary to her own, and conclude that the proposed library sale and shrinkage is unwise.  Her omissions included leaving out the fact that, quite shocking to many, a private school, Saint Ann's, is benefitting to the tune of what is likely to be tens of millions of dollars if the library is sold and shrunk.  Behind the scenes the possibility of materializing this private benefit for the private school seems to be a significant factor in driving forward this public transaction with its attendant public losses.

More important, in terms of letting readers evaluate the objectivity with which Ms. Bellafante was presenting what she wrote, Ms. Bellafante neglected to disclose to them, something unknown to me when she was interviewing me for the article: that she is a parent with a child in that Saint Ann's school that stands to benefit from the transaction she was writing about.

In addition to Ms. Bellafante not disclosing this herself when she wrote the article, the New York Times thereafter chose not to publish a comment on her article (the article was one that was open for comment) that I wrote that would have filled in this omission.  My comment on the article, provided below, noted that Ms. Bellafante disclosed to me, as she was writing the article, that she already knew about how Saint Ann's, a private school, is getting a significant payday (in a currently undisclosed amount) if the proposed sale and shrinkage of the public's library proceeds. Plus my comment noted that Ms. Bellafante and I had discussed the issue of Saint Ann's lobbying for the sale and shrinkage of the library in the background.  I also noted that  Ms. Bellafante did NOT tell me during those discussions that she is a Saint Ann's parent.

The Times decision not to publish my comment was apparently made after my ultimately-not-to-be-published comment was forwarded to Ms. Bellafante's editor who, apparently after consultation with Ms Bellafante, contacted me to say that it was not being published and to explain her view as editor that these things were not of concern.  I do not concur with Ms Bellafante’s editor in this assessment and I am providing our email exchange about this below.

Unfortunately, the publishing of Ms. Bellafante’s article was very well timed to influence an important political vote by Brooklyn Community Board 2 about whether the transaction should proceed and was used as propaganda by those attempting to push the transaction forward.

It would probably be worthwhile to consider chronologically the following concerning Ms. Bellafante’s writing of the article.

On July 6, 2015, the Monday after the 4th of July weekend Ms. Bellafante showed up at a hastily scheduled meeting of the Brooklyn Community Board 2 Land Use Committee.   Because the meeting was atypically being set up ad hoc at the very last minute with notice not going out to the public until 8:55 PM, Thursday, June 30th (essentially for all practical purposes Friday morning of the 4th of July weekend) Citizens Defending Libraries of which I am a part and co-founder of, had a tough time notifying as many people as we could to get the word out that this meeting was to occur.

According to what Robert Perris, the District Manager for CB2 told CB2 members later (July 11, 2015) when distributing and touting Ms. Bellafante’s “observations,” Ms. Bellafante “apparently walked over from her Brooklyn Heights home to attend the community board's public hearing on the ULURP applications associated with the Brooklyn Public Library's plans for its Brooklyn Heights and Business and Career branches” to attend the meeting.

Attending the meeting Ms. Bellafante heard discussion by a CB2 Land use committee that was obviously flailing about helplessly with, for instance, a total lack of knowledge about how much they were actually shrinking the library.  The public was not allowed to speak before the Land Use Committee voted, but it would be hard to think that anyone attending would not have been greatly affected, taking expressed sentiments to heart, when, at the end of the meeting, a long line of community members got up and spoke absolutely unanimously and very eloquently (we should get all our video posted on this) inveighing against sale and shrinkage of the library. No member of the public attending the meeting spoke any words of approval for the scheme.

In news coverage of that night summarizing many of the comments I am quoted as follows:

"This is a very sad vote," said Michael D. D. White, co-founder of Citizens Defending Libraries, which has been fighting the sale. "You've declared open season on selling off of libraries, you've declared open season on the selling off of public assets in general. And you've set the precedent for selling them off at an extraordinarily low price."

See:  the Brooklyn Eagle:  CB2 committee approves sale of Brooklyn Heights Library, with caveats, By Mary Frost, July 7, 2015.  I said much the same thing on News 12 coverage which, with a few short minutes and few words managed to cover other essential points Ms. Bellafante neglected in her article.

Apparently, however, Ms. Bellafante's point of view was not, and perhaps could not be, swayed by the public sentiments expressed that night.  Ms. Bellafante’s editor email to me stated that Ms. Bellfante’s “opinion” that “the redevelopment of the Brooklyn Heights branch should go forward had already been formed” and, in fact, was formed before she learned that the Saint Ann’s school her child attends was benefitting.  We don’t know when Ms. Bellafante decided she would write her article, but it has come to our attention that Ms. Bellafante was informed that Saint Ann’s was benefitting at least by the evening of Monday, June 29, 2015. . .  which means that her “opinion” was already formed by that Monday.

Tuesday, July 7th, the day after the Land Use Committee meeting Ms. Bellafante attended, Ms Bellafante reached out to me leaving a message on Facebook at 3:42 PM.  See below:

Michael: I am a Brooklyn Heights resident and columnist at the NYT and I'm writing this week about some of the changes facing Brooklyn libraries (both at Cadman and Sunset Plaza).

I was at the Community Board meeting last night and noticed some folks holding up signs and assumed they were affiliated with Citizens Defending Libraries. I'd love to talk to you (and/or you and your wife, who I understand is also very involved in this issue) about some of your concerns. I live right on Willow so could meet for coffee in the AM if you have time or we could talk on the phone if that's easier.

Let me know. My email is  giniab[at]nytimes.com

Many thanks,
Ginia

Ms Bellafante finally reached me the following afternoon (Wednesday July 8th) when she called my cell phone wanting a call back “before 6:30 PM” because she was “on a deadline.”

I called her back and we talked extensively starting about 4:30 PM.  In multiple respects I was surprised by how much she told me she already knew about the library sales.  Although she was contacting me with a stated deadline that was imminent, Ms. Bellafnate’s preparation for her article with its pro-development message the article did not appear to have been be rushed into production. 

Her article, published in the Metropolitan Section, was posted on line Friday afternoon.

In collecting more information from me, Ms. Bellafante let me know that she was already very familiar with many facts she later left out of the article, including how Saint Ann's private school is benefitting behind the scenes if the public's library is sold and shrunk.  She was also aware of the linkage between the sale of the Donnell Library for an inexcusably low price and the virtual carbon-copy replication of that model with the proposed sale of the Brooklyn Heights Library: She said she knew that when David Offensend was at the NYPL overseeing the much criticized Donnell sale, his wife, Janet Offensend, went to the BPL where she was key in evolving the "real estate strategy" and concurrent decision to sell and shrink the Heights Library.

Nevertheless, there were a fair number of things I told her that she didn't know that I noted didn't show up in her article even when I think they were of significance.  For instance, that Bill de Blasio had stood on the steps of the 42nd Street Central Reference Library in July of 2013 calling for a halt to the sale and shrinkage of libraries, including this particular Brooklyn Heights Library,* but then not long after, while developer applications were pending was taking money from the development team his administration ultimately selected as he let the sale proceed through to the next steps preceding the public approval process that Ms. Bellafante was writing about.  At Ms. Bellfante's request I directed her to a video available on the Citizens Defending Libraries YouTube channel of de Blasio's July 2013 statements appearing beside us to opposing the library sales.

(* Mr. de Blasio (7/12/2013): "It's public land and public facilities and public value under threat. . . and once again we see, lurking right behind the curtain, real estate developers who are very anxious to get their hands on these valuable properties")

Instead of mentioning anything about de Blasio in connection with the above, Ms. Bellafante downplayed the likely legitimacy of suspicions about our top elected officials and the sacrifice public assets for real estate development by suggesting to her readers that such suspicions were a sort of reflexive hangover, an "aftermath of the Bloomberg era" (therefore safely past tense and dissociated from the de Blasio era?).

I was also able to inform Ms. Bellafante, because she did not know, that Scott Sherman, who had written a series of articles about proposed NYC library sales and shrinkages for The Nation, had a new book book just out, "Patience and Fortitude- Power, Real Estate, and the Fight to Save a Public Library," that included in it new revelations about just how extremely little the NYPL netted from the sale and shrinkage of the Donnell Library: Less than $33 million.  From that amount must still be subtracted annual rent for a temporary replacement Donnell that started at $850,000 after Donnell, still not reopened in any form, closed in spring of 2008 and also must be subtracted millions of dollars paid to high-priced professionals associated with making that transaction materialize.  That very low net price was for a 97,000 square foot library shrunk down to a largely underground and largely bookless library of just just 28,000 square feet, while the penthouse apartment in the 50-story luxury tower replacing this public building is on the market for $60 million and other apartments in the building are selling for prices in the neighborhood of what the NYPL netted.

Ms. Bellafante did not tell me that she had already formulated an opinion that the Heights Library should similarly be sold and shrunk, but a few odd things indicated she might already have some leanings about certain things . . .  

Ms. Bellafante dismissed with disinterest the inconsistencies of the Brooklyn Heights Association respecting its position on selling and shrinking the library because of the gap in time between when it advocated the library be enlarged and its switch to now advocate that it be shrunk.

The fact that the library was significantly enlarged and completely upgraded with appreciable public expense in 1993, making the building essentially 5 years newer than the adjacent Forest City Ratner One Pierrepont Plaza, Morgan Stanley building, was irrelevant to her.  That Morgan Stanley building is where Hillary Clinton has chosen to locate her National Campaign Headquarters.  “After all,” that (1993) was “twenty years” back at the time the BPL announced it wanted to sell the library Ms. Bellafante reasoned aloud sharing her thoughts.

The Friday afternoon Ms. Bellafante's article went up, I immediately started posting comments to the article to add to it facts and perspective that I felt the article lacked.  Processing of comments was slow with some taking five hours to appear.

Publication of Ms. Bellafante’s article this particular weekend was very well-timed to have an influence on a CB2 vote scheduled for the following Wednesday, July 15, 2015, as to whether the library should be sold and shrunk and Saturday, the afternoon following the article’s publication it was sent around to all the CB2 members as propaganda by the CB2 District Manager suggesting the relevance of Ms. Bellfante’s “observations” to the upcoming vote.  See below:

July 11, 2015 at 3:20:21 PM EDT.

"Ginia Bellafante, who writes the "Big City" column in the Metropolitan section of the New York Times, apparently walked over from her Brooklyn Heights home to attend the community board's public hearing on the ULURP applications associated with the Brooklyn Public Library's plans for its Brooklyn Heights and Business and Career branches.  The applications are on the agenda for this Wednesday's general meeting, to be held at 6:00 pm at St. Francis College.  I thought the members of Community Board 2 and its Land Use Committee might be interested in Ms. Bellafante's observations."- District Manager Robert Perris.

(For what it’s worth, almost as soon as Ms. Bellfante’s article was posted on Friday, 3:04 PM, Ashley Cotton, Senior Vice President and Chief of Staff of Forest City Ratner, another of the real estate parities involved in the proposed library sale and shrinkage tweeted Ms. Bellafante’s article embedding a “thank you.”)

On Sunday, July 12th when I learned in the afternoon that Ms. Bellafante was a Saint Ann’s parent I submitted the following comment to the Times article (I was still awaiting publication of a previous comment about digital books).  This is the comment the Times would not publish:

When I spoke with Ms. Bellafante there was a great deal of information she impressed me by telling me that she already knew,, most of which doesn't appear here.  For instance, the background connections explaining how this proposed sale is modeled on the Donnell sale debacle, conceived at the same time.

Ms. Bellafante also explained that she knew all about how Saint Ann's, a private school, is getting a significant payday from the sale and shrinkage of the public's library in a currently undisclosed amount.  We discussed the issue of Saint Ann's lobbying for the sale in the background.

What Ms. Bellafante did NOT tell me and I now understand to be true is that Ms. Bellafante is a Saint Ann's parent, something not disclosed in this article.

Here is what Ms. Bellafante's editor wrote back to me at the end of the next day confirming that Ms. Bellfante was a Saint Ann's parent together with reasoning about my comment that was not being published:

From: Virshup, Amy  
To: mddwhite  
Sent: Mon, Jul 13, 2015 4:39 pm
Subject: Your comment on Ginia Bellafante's column

Dear Mr. White,

I am Ginia Bellafante's editor at the Sunday Metropolitan section of the Times and your comment about Ms. Bellafante's recent column on proposed library redevelopments in Brooklyn was forwarded along to me. The comment was not posted on the site, as I'm sure you know.  But I didn't want to let the moment pass without getting back to you.

I spoke to Ms. Bellafante about any possible conflict of interest. She began following the library issue before she knew that any possible sale of air rights by St. Ann's could be part of the project. She had not heard that anyone in the school was lobbying for the redevelopment to go forward, until you and other opponents claimed to her this was the case. Her opinion of whether the redevelopment of the Brooklyn Heights branch should go forward had already been formed and was not influenced by this news, or by the fact that she has a child at St. Ann's.

As citizens of New York, we here at the Times often end up writing and editing about things that intersect with our own lives. There are cases in which we feel that a reporter or columnist is simply too close to an issue to write fairly about it. We don't think this is one of those cases.

Sincerely,
Amy Virshup

Here is what I wrote back:

Monday, July 20, 2015 9:21 pm

Dear Ms. Virshup,

Yes, thank you, I am aware that the Times did not publish my comment.

When I talked with Ginia she told me that she knew all about the Saint Ann's payday.  I was surprised by how much she knew about this and other things like the linkage between Donnnell and other library sales with the Offensends (from our shared Brooklyn Heights neighborhood*) in the background and somewhat surprised by how much she chose to leave out as too unimportant to specifically mention, and too unimportant apparently to weigh in the balance of her conclusions.

        * We also similarly talked about Mr. Gutman.

Talking about Saint Ann's, we talked about the PowerPoint presentation that Saint Ann's did for its faculty about the library sale.  We also discussed at length the issue of Saint Ann's lobbying for its private benefit behind the scenes to drive forward this transaction where the public incurs significant loss.  I don't know when Ms. Bellafante first became well informed about the Saint Ann's payday before talking to me, nor do I know when she formulated her opinions, but I firmly feel it was, as a matter of good journalistic practice, a matter for her to disclose to her readers.  Ostensibly, at least she was formulating her thoughts when seeking information from me, and perhaps she should still have been.  On the other hand you are suggesting she already had a fixed idea of the conclusions she intended to promulgate before contacting me.

Failing disclosure in her article, I think it would have been fairest to the public and Ms. Bellafante's readers to at least learn that Ms. Bellafante was a Saint Ann's parent via my comment when I offered it rather than blocking it. This would have been especially valuable to have done on a timely basis, because Ms. Bellafante's article was used as a propaganda piece sent out officially by the CB2 office for CB2 board member consideration in connection with their vote before the CB2 members voted.  It was very well timed and well written for that purpose.

I could quibble about other matters in the article that look like they reflected an agenda on Ms. Bellafante's part, but I suppose I will only add that Ms. Bellafante did not mention to me that she was was going to depict Citizens Defending Libraries as having a sort of a feud with Urban Librarians Unite.  I don't believe she mentioned Urban Librarians Unite at all, and she certainly didn't mention her intent to have them comment on Citizens Defending Libraries or offer any opportunities of balance in that regard.

As for the question of when a columnist is too close to an issue to write fairly about it there will be different opinions. I, myself, personally, believe it is often necessary to write about things intersecting closely with our own lives. .  although maybe this is less often the case at the Times where the staff is large.  The lack of disclosure is what is troubling.

As to whether these or other relationships affected Ms. Bellafante's judgement in these matters, some of her logic troubled me like quickly dismissing the oddness of so drastically shrinking a library we so recently expanded (effectively the library is five years newer than the adjacent Ratner building, One Pierrepont Plaza, where Hillary Clinton has located her national headquarters).  Right now I'll leave the question of whether Ms. Bellafante's judgement was affected to others to consider without stating my own conclusion.  It's something I believe you and the Times should still be thinking about.   As for the public, it  won't be able to evaluate the question for itself without disclosure.

MICHAEL D. D. WHITE
Citizens Defending Libraries 
Noticing New York
http://noticingnewyork.blogspot.com/
National Notice
http://nationalnotice.blogspot.com/
W: (718) 834-6184
C: (917) 885-1478
mddwhite [at]aol.com

I did not get a response back.

One additional afterthought I’ve had is that, even if Ms. Bellafante formulated her apparently irrevocable opinion that the library should she sold before she formally knew that Saint Ann’s was getting a great deal of financial benefit in the background, she still formulated her opinion with that Saint Ann's sale being part of the milieu, the background and social environment of people around her, against which she formulated her thoughts.  Without being very careful it is not so easy to say that there was no consequent influence.

The purpose of this letter is not to point out where Ms. Bellafante and I may disagree in about conclusions that could be subjective, but pointing out some of these differences will help indicate instances where more wary and alerted readers might conclude that Ms. Bellafante's judgment was off.

Ms. Bellafante is entitled to a personal observation upon which she describes the library as "dilapidated," especially since she told me that she has visited the library with her son, but it is an assessment we don't share and I directed her to an extensively complete set of photographs including all the space not normally viewable by the public that I believe supports a different conclusion.  While it must be treated as Bellafante's own assessment it seems less accurate than an indication that she was looking to pass along promulgated talking points of the BPL.  Using sarcasm to belittle the idea that there is need for scrutiny because the BPL estimated costs of $9 million in necessary repairs for the library, $3.5 million for a partially out of commission air conditioning system (actually estimated by the BPL as higher than that) are likely inflated, Ms. Bellafante tossed off to her readers a disbelief that library administrators are interested in doing real estate deals, but the BPL's minutes show that when Linda Johnson arrived as BPL president she told her board that real estate deals were her top priority.

While Ms. Bellafante's quoting me about digital books is an accurate portion of our conversation about digital vs. phyical books it is a highly truncated one.  Yes, as recently covered by a WNYC "On The Media" segment and National Notice article, digital books and keeping physical books off site does mean libraries cease to have zones of privacy, but in saying that we are not against digital books I cited librarian John Palfrey's new "BiblioTech" book as calling for digital plus physical books (requiring more, not less, room), and I noted that people tend to prefer physical books (probably in part because they learn better with them- as covered in the Times) so that, despite the push of the BPL and NYPL toward digital books, circulation is way up with almost all of that circulation being physical books.  I also cited the just-out Washington Post article about how much more expensive digital books are and how with a push to digital rental models and increasingly consolidated content control digital books may mean that content winds up just vanishing from the libraries. . . .

. . . Instead, Ms. Bellefante's article uses was written to imply that the Brooklyn Heights Library is being shrunk based on "library science."

In conclusion, I believe that that there is substantial evidence that Ms. Bellafante approached her subject with bias and a fixed predetermination about what she would write that improperly fore-ran her collection and analysis of relevant facts and that, partly because that fixed predetermination persisted the way it did that Ms. Bellafante being a Saint Ann's parent, a school benefitting very significantly from this transaction, should have been disclosed in her article.  Similarly, I think the Times should have published rather than blocked my comment that would have provided an alternative, though less effective, disclosure of that relevant fact.  In fact, I see no reason why the Times did not publish my comment other than the original lack of disclosure might have been viewed as potentially embarrassing.

Had readers been informed by such disclosure there would have been cause to be more alert for the balance that I believe was missing from Ms.Bellafante's article.

Here, albeit with a few overlaps from what is cited above, are things Ms. Bellafante left out of her article:

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

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

    2.    The BPL is selling a  sturdy,  readily adaptable library in good shape, together with its land and development rights worth over $100 million (probably $120 million or more) to the public in order to net next to nothing in a transaction that may even incur a  net cash loss.  Further, there is no assurance that the paltry sums, if any, gleaned from the sale,  all going to the city, would ever subsequently go to libraries.  Libraries, highly valued by the public, cost relatively little to fund, but this sale is apt to encourage further underfunding like this.

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

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

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

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

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

Here are links I supplied Ms. Bellafante as research resources to supplement what I understood she had found:

    •    This Citizens Defending Libraries page with a handout we gave the CB2 Land Use Committee members (linking to other handouts including the memo about environmental issues).  It links backward to other valuable sources.  Monday, July 6, 2015,  Handout Number 1 For July 6, 2014 Brooklyn Community Board 2 Land Use Committee Meeting- Let's Get the Record Straight! Concerns Re Proposed Library Sale+Shrinkage To be Voted On 

   •    This is the Citizens Defending Libraries YouTube 12-minute interview with the 2-minute de Blasio clip right after the introduction.  BK Indie Media Interviews CDL On Library Selloff Schemes

    •    This is the product of the Citizens Defending Libraries forums we've had on the subject of selling off and privatizing public assets in general.  Our Public Assets Under Attack- A Calamity of the Commons Unfolding That We Must Act Collectively Against- How best To Express It? 

   •    This presentation of the tour photos showing the library to be in very good shape with lots of readily usable space.   In A Closed Library, A Tour of Much The Public Doesn't Get To See- Don't Let Them Close This Library, The Brooklyn Heights Library On Cadman Plaza West, Corner of Tillary & Clinton

    •    This is Citizens Defending Libraries statement of principles posted in connection with the Sunset Park library proposal.  Monday, November 3, 2014,  Proposed Statement of Principles Concerning Any Possible Redevelopment of Library-- Sunset Park Branch.

    •    Reference to recent Noticing New York articles I wrote about the libraries from July and June.

Sincerely,

MICHAEL D. D. WHITE
Citizens Defending Libraries 
Noticing New York
http://noticingnewyork.blogspot.com/
National Notice
http://nationalnotice.blogspot.com/
W: (718) 834-6184
C: (917) 885-1478
mddwhite [at]aol.com

Questions Brooklyn Community Board 2 Land Use Committee And Other Members Are Raising About The Proposed Sale And Shrinkage of the Brooklyn Heights Central Destination Downtown Library

Wednesday, June 17th, the FIRST EVER public hearing about the proposed sale and shrinkage of an important New York City library, was held before Brooklyn Community Board 2's Land Use Committee.

The proposed sale and shrinkage is of the Brooklyn Heights Library, Brooklyn's central destination library in Downtown Brooklyn on Cadman Plaza West at the corner of Tillary and Clinton.

In recent years New York City library administration officials proposed to sell, or actually sold, other libraries, but no public hearings were required, because unlike this present situation, even though those libraries were funded mostly and very heavily by the city, those libraries, the Donnell Library, the Mid-Manhattan Library and SIBL (the Science, Industry and Business Library) were not owned by the city.  The latter of these two proposed sales were supposed to be part of the NYPL's Central Library Plan.  It would have also destroyed the stacks for the 42nd Street Central Reference Library's research books.

No hearings were required because, as noted, the city didn't own the land being sold, but it would have been far better if public hearings had been held when those other sales were proposed because the transactions, handing out juicy deals to the real estate industry, did not stand up to scrutiny.

The November 2007 sale and shrinkage of the 97,000 square foot Donnell Library on 53rd Street across from MoMA, one day supposed to be "replaced" by a 28,000 square foot, largely underground, largely bookless library is now universally recognized to have been a colossal mistake, even sheepishly by library administration officials.  The sale, a huge loss to the public and even shrinking the library down to less than one-third size, netted the NYPL considerably less than $30 million while the penthouse in the fifty-story building replacing it on what was documented to be the highest value block in Manhattan is being marketed for $60 million.  The NYPL would have been deeply in a financial hole, suffering a significant cash loss from the sale if it had endeavored to replace the Donnell Library with a full-scale equivalent of the library sold rather than shrinking it down to a fraction.

The de Blasio administration ultimately defunded the Central Library Plan involving the sale of Mid-Manhattan and SIBL in what was a similar drastic downsizing of publicly owned library space and assets, selling off over 400,000 square feet of library space to cram it into just 80,000 square feet.   Only after the Central Library Plan was derailed was it revealed that this shrinkage and divestiture of assets was going to cost the public over one-half billion dollars.  Exactly how much more we still don't know but that half billion figure is hundreds of millions more than what the NYPL was previously publicizing to be the plan's cost.

Why the discrepancy?  Why were these deals so bad for the public, so almost inconceivably worse for the public than could be imagined in ways that were not openly represented by library administration officials to be the case?

The best answer is that they were really being done as favors for the real estate industry for whom the deals were very beneficial.

Now CB2 finds itself with another such library deal, the proposed Brooklyn deal, that's closely modeled to replicate the Donnell sale, another luxury tower squashing down an important library to just one-third size.

CB2's Land Use Committee members raised important questions about the proposed transaction on the 17th after hearing public testimony that spotlighted multitudinous concerns.  Three of the committee's top concerns:

1.)   Brooklyn Public Library administration officials are supposedly proposing this hand-off to a developer in order to bring in funds for libraries.  The problem with tha is that this pretense doesn't bear scrutiny because, as CB2 committee members noted, there is absolutely no assurance any funds from a sale and shrinkage would go to the libraries. . .  for two reasons, actually: a.) because any funds would go to the city that now displays a tendency to withhold funds from the libraries and there'd never be a way to trace the funds or assure they had actually come back, and b.) when you do the math and pierce through the BPL's lack of transparency on the subject, the amount of cash netted with the BPL incurring this huge public loss, like Donnell, is a paltry sum and perhaps less than zero.

2.)  The committee, taking note of the imbalance of what is now fast-paced development in the area with the provision and maintenance of public infrastructure, previously voted that it should not approve any huge new developments while severe overcrowding at PS8 continues unaddressed.  PS8 is currently at 140% and soon faces worse.  Approving the sale of the library for more development would amount to overturning the committee's previous vote.

3.)  In order to obtain a bonus and build a bigger building while also trying to generate public support for the selling off the library's assets, the developer is proposing to build so-called "affordable" housing units at two other sites. Committee members noted that with a sort of quintessential "poor-door," in-your-face bravado the developer is choosing to put these units in a far less desirable location than increasingly fashionable Brooklyn Heights, where the units in the luxury tower replacing the library would be marketed.  The result would be various forms of gentrification:  Those wanting to curtail the many visitors coming to the vicinity of Brooklyn Heights when they use the downtown neighborhood would achieve their aim, plus a high-end luxury building would be built on the Brooklyn Heights border . . .   any lower income residents would get settled at a far remove.

Facing these and other concerns the Land Use committee deadlocked, refuse to recommend the BPL's proposed sale and shrinkage. 

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

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

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.

Other things are also on the minds of CB2 members.  Ultimately the entire CB2 board will be asked to vote on the sale and shrinkage of the Brooklyn Heights library the BPL officials are recommending.

At a meeting where the BPL presented the proposed sale and shrinkage to the CB2 Youth and Education Committee one member asked why so much of the proposed "replacement" library had to be underground.  The answer?:  Money.  Unless the library is shrunk way down and as much as is currently proposed to be underground, is put underground, the nominal amount of  money (if any?) the library is netting when it sells off this significant asset would be so little as to be laughingly imperceptible when presented as the supposed justification for the sale.

Also on the mind of one of that committee's members:  Sometimes when you visit the library you find people who are observable as probably homeless and, for some people, that's depressing.  From canvassing and talking with users outside the library (I am a co-founder of Citizens Defending Libraries) we know that there are also a fair number of users of the library, people impeccably dressed and groomed as they look for jobs, that you would never suspect to be homeless, but, in Will Smith-"The Pursuit of Happyness" fashion, they are.  Yes, and there are also people with low incomes who's could be in danger of becoming homeless without support they get from the library.  Frankly, a full range of people use the library, myself included.

As for the conundrum of how best to treat the perceptibly homeless:  That's a management question.  Swapping the existing library for a smaller one or one that has new surfaces and furniture has nothing to do with what decisions are made when that kind of management challenge is grappled with.

Another CB2 member suggested that our Citizens Defending Libraries opposition to the sale and shrinkage of the library should focus more on the value of the existing library to the public (it has a dollar value to the public of well over $100 million) and how little the BPL is proposing to sell the library for, perhaps netting less than zero.   Conversely, this CB2 member suggested that it is not important or relevant that Saint Ann's, a private school, will be getting a huge payday if the library is sold. This is because, if the library is sold and shrunk Saint Ann's will be able to get paid for transferable real estate development rights, walking away with a free-and-clear amount that may exceed the cash the city is netting when it sells the library.

This CB2 member told us that we should not begrudge Saint Ann's its payday, because the school is entitled to benefit by selling what it owns and that we should not be concerned if Saint Ann's is working hard behind the scenes to lobby local politicians for the sale and shrinkage of the library.  `You can lobby elected officials against the sale,' this CB2 member told us.  We can do it behind the scenes if we want and we can wine and dine elected officials in the process he said.  There is truth to some of this analysis, but mostly we disagree.  Among other things, we probably don't have the same kind of access, nor can we reach deeply into our purse believing that any war chest expenditures will be more than replenished by a coming payday.

The fact that we know this CB2 member to be a significantly close confidante and advisor to one of our more important elected officials makes us wonder whether this is advice that has been given to that elected official and whether it is reflective of the kind of lobbying that Saint Ann's is doing behind the scenes condoned at least by some.

Certainly, if nothing else, the influence that Saint Ann's has had with respect to Brooklyn Heights Association relating to this proposed transaction is improper.  And the Brooklyn Heights Association has, indeed, taken a very odd position supporting the transaction that would benefit Saint Ann's.  That matters a lot.

One example of how it matters?:  The Daily News printing its editorial defending this real estate transaction prominently advised its readers of the BHA's support.  In the editorial it seemed as if the Daily News was working hard to ridicule those opposing the sale and shrinkage of libraries and wanted to suggest that those doing so don't have that right.

So these are just some of the things the CB2 members are considering as maters of concern when debating this transaction.  There are a good many more for them to think about as well.  The BPL is not being transparent about what it is doing.  That includes not releasing documents like its "Strategic Real Estate Plan" (dating back to 2007) and "The Revson Study," both of which would help the public to know which libraries the BPL will target as real estate deals next.

The BPL also worked with the developer to cynically release hundreds of pages of withheld environmental documents (along with all sorts of other documents) in an information dump two days before the hearing on the 17th and those documents have some startling revelations.