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

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.

Do you know that in the 1990s, not so very long ago at all, New York City substantially augmented its library resources by spending to create more library space at two major central destination business libraries simultaneously?  And, if you rewind the clock, looking at one of those libraries, the Brooklyn Heights Association was in the thick of things fighting for more library space. . .

. .   Now, as fate (or the real estate industry) would have it, both of those central destination business libraries are besieged by those who would sell them, hand them out as juicy deals.

. .  And, for reasons that seem suspicious, the Brooklyn Heights Association now finds itself on the other side, advocating to shrink the library it once fought to enlarge.

The First Ever Hearing On Selling and Shrinking a Public Library- Running Into the BHA

Wednesday June 17, 2015 was the first ever hearing about selling and shrinking a NYC library, the Brooklyn Heights Library, Brooklyn's central destination library in Downtown Brooklyn on Cadman Plaza West at Tillary and Clinton, was held before the Land use Committee of Brooklyn’s Community Board 2.

Patrick Killackey, president of the Brooklyn Heigts Association now favoring the sale and shrinkage of Brooklyn's Brooklyn Heights Library.- From the Brooklyn Eagle

At the end of the hearing I approached Patrick Killackey, the new president of the board of the Brooklyn Heights Association, and told him the BHA was long overdue in following through to reconsider and change the position it took in favor of selling and shrinking the library, a reconsideration Killackey’s predecessor, Alexandra Bowie, said publicly the BHA might be willing to entertain when I questioned her as a co-founder of Citizens Defending Libraries at the February 24, 2015 annual Brooklyn Heights Association meeting:

"I will take that up with our library committee, which is how we operate, and if the library committee feels that it wants to revisit the question, then I will take it to the full board," Bowie said.

Bklyn Hts Blog: Who do you support?

The BHA’s original decision to support the sale and shrinkage of the library was rushed, secretive, lacking in public input and suspect in a number of ways.  We have asked the BHA to change course from the start, including at the previous, 2014 BHA annual meeting.  Back then, as well, it was very clear that public sentiment was strong on our side.

The last time I approached Mr. Killackey entreating that the BHA finally reconsider its position was at the May 9, 2015 annual Brooklyn Heights Association house tour where a majority of those on the tour wore our Citizens Defending Libraries “Don’t Sell Our Libraries” buttons.  Mr. Killackey told me then he was “off duty.”

I am sure Mr. Killackey believed I came on strong as I approached him after the hearing, and I probably did as I was very annoyed that at the hearing the BHA had just delivered inane testimony in favor of selling and shrinking the library Ms. Bowie herself standing to read it into the microphone.  Mr. Killackey may also have felt beset upon under the circumstances, because the hearing that had just concluded was packed with people.  Setting aside those people whose salaries (via the real estate industry or closely analogous situations) depended upon the testimony being in favor of a library sale and shrinkage, the hearing testimony was virtually unanimously opposed to selling and shrinking the library, leaving the Brooklyn Heights Association an odd outlier.

People told me they left the hearing more passionately opposed to the library sale and shrinkages than when they arrived.  This was after listening to Brooklyn Public Library president Linda Johnson protest to a groaning audience that “the BPL is not in the real estate business.”  And it was after hearing the developer refuse to say what Saint Ann's school is being paid as a result of the library’s sale and shrinkage because, he averred, “it's a private transaction” . . .  even though it is driving a public one!

I told Mr. Killackey that the BHA should be meeting with Citizens Defending Libraries and that we could educate the BHA about what was wrong with their position and the way that it had been reached.  Mr. Killackey seemed insulted and told me that I didn’t know anything about him or what he already knew about the library sale.

Fighting To Properly Fund Libraries

We then got into a discussion where Mr. Killackey made the point that NYC libraries have always been underfunded and have always had to fight for funds.  I have had a number of discussions with various people recently and it seems to me that this is a talking point that people arguing for the sell-off and shrinkage of libraries are now using to contradict what we have made a point of saying: NYC libraries are being underfunded at an unprecedentedly low level as an excuse to sell them off.

The explanation for library underfunding!  It's easy to see: The generation of deals like this, the 50-story building replacing the Donnell library.  And the proposal to replicate the Donnell sale swindle with a 38-story building replacing the Brooklyn Heights Library.

If you see things the way we do then what seems to be a very hard thing to explain becomes easy to explain: You ask “why should a `progressive’ mayor be engaged in an unprecedented underfunding of the libraries in a time of plenty?” - Then you look at the huge luxury condominium tower proposed to replace the Brooklyn Heights Library, shrinking it down to one-third size, and you say that’s the answer staring me starkly in the face!  And the answer is all the more obvious when you realize that the real estate development team “lurking right behind the curtain” to build it is sending money to the mayor.  See:  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?

We Used To Fight For Funds To Expand Libraries: Business Libraries As Case In Point

Mr. Killackey is correct that there is a history of libraries needing to fight for their funds from the city, just as every department or entity seeking city funding fights to justify its case for funds.  But the libraries never before had to fight for funds so that underfunding wouldn’t be a reason to sell and shrink libraries.  Au contraire, in the past, libraries were fighting for funds to expand.  And fighting for funds to expand vs. fighting for funds not to sell and shrink libraries is  hardly an apples to apples comparison.

Two central destination libraries (the Downtown Brooklyn heights Library and SIBL) that were both funded at the same time, both with a special focus on business.  The facilities for library patrons were thus mightily expanded, an embarrassment of rishes.  And now both may vanish at the same time? 

Example?: A really good one is this very library that Killackey’s BHA is advocating be sold and shrunk.  In June of 1992 Crain’s New York Business was reporting about the expansion going on at this library.  The point of the article was that the BPL’s fight to fund the library was going to be more uphill because of competition as the city simultaneously went forward with another expansion of library space,  plans for the NYPL’s Science, Industry and Business Library (SIBL) at 34th Street in the former B. Altman’s building:

The usually subdued leadership at the Brooklyn Public Library is peeved that Brooklyn’s pre-eminent business library is being cast aside as city and state officials build a library that may duplicate work already done by Brooklyn Public.

Not to worry: Both central destination business library expansions were fully funded and completed in the end.

The BPL spent $5 million, the equivalent of nearly $10 million in today’s dollars, on its central destination Brooklyn Library.  Opened in 1962 with 90,000 books its collection was by then up, substantially, to 130,000 volumes, plus periodicals and other resource materials.  The library reopened Tuesday, October 12, 1993 in a no-cost-overrun renovation.  The library added new second floor space over two of its wings.  It involved a substantial gutting for the installation of upgraded mechanical, wiring, air conditioning and heating (an automatic system), energy efficient lighting, while providing and adding space for on-line computer services recognizing the “technological revolution.”  It alleviated what had been “a cramped atmosphere.”  (See: Heights Press: Library Reopens Next Tuesday, by Roanan Geberer, October 7, 1993 and Library Renovation is Moving Along, by Roanan Geberer, July 23, 1992.)  The Building (now 63,000 square feet) was thereby expanded “by nearly a third.” (See: The Phoenix, Expansion Work To Close Branch For 12-16 Months, Michael Armstrong, May 2-10, 1991.)

In Manhattan, SIBL moved forward to completion, opening in the spring of 1995.  It’s 160,000 square feet of new additional library space cost $100 million (consider adjusting that for an equivalent in today’s dollars).

Reverse Course On Both Business Libraries- Simultaneously?

The Crain’s June 1992 article discussed to what extent these two libraries competed with each other, duplicating services, but what library patrons got was investment and expansion of such services at both sites simultaneously.  Now, with a proposed concurrent sale of both libraries, library patrons would lose services at both locations simultaneously. . .

. .   In fact, part of SIBL has already been sold.  In 2012 the NYPL quietly sold off 87% of SIBL’s space for just $60.8 million.  What it sold off was space where books could be stored and readily retrieved from.  With the sale books disappeared from the site, most of what in the 1992 Crain’s article NYPL president Timothy Heally described as SIBL’s “overused . .  business and science collection” of 2.5 million volumes.  Librarians tell us many of these volumes now take appreciable extra time to retrieve for patrons because they are in Chicago.  According to Crain’s, SIBL was also “a depository for patents and government documents from not only the United States, but nations of the European Community.”  Similarly, the Brooklyn library enlarged in 1993 was a designated Federal Depository (and still is).

The unsold portion of SIBL that’s threatened by the NYPL’s announced intent to sell it, constitutes, just as it is all by itself, a very valuable viable library notwithstanding that so much of its book storage space has been sold off.  That’s even though SIBL now has far fewer books than the 90,000 volumes the Brooklyn library had on premises when it opened in 1962.  By contrast, in Crain’s in 1992 the NYPL bragged that SIBL’s book count was “20 times that of Brooklyn’s” and that it had “60,000 periodical titles.”

Visit SIBL at 34th Street and Madison and see what you find there.  It continues, in beautifully designed fashion, to have every imaginable resource that a library intended to provide a platform for and to work with computer resources is supposed to provide.  Although SIBL’s book count has been devastatingly diminished, it has expanses of currently empty shelves that could be refilled, this at a time when library circulation is up about 60% with almost all of that increase being physical, not digital books.

Knowledgeable About The Turnaround?

Mr. Killackey's thus-it-has-ever-been-so assertion that libraries have always had to fight for their funding with his accompanying implication that we are not now facing a new threat as their sale is blames on that underfunding, ignores that fact that throughout the Giuliani administration we were expending public funds to expand libraries.  It was only when the Bloomberg administration came in, also looking at selling off other public assets (schools, public housing, etc), that we made a 180% turnaround.  It ignores how the BPL’s minutes document that before the BPL was planning to sell libraries there was no backlog of capital library expenditures.  It ignores how the minutes of the BPL document that when the plans to sell libraries were being launched the BPL agreed with the city to defer and build up those capital repairs rather than fund them and that this was done in tandem with an effort to “strengthen the argument for” its “strategic real estate plan” to sell and shrink libraries.  All of this had been documented in Noticing New York, but Mr. Killackey seems unaware (.Sunday, August 31, 2014, Mostly In Plain Sight (A Few Conscious Removals Notwithstanding) Minutes Of Brooklyn Public Library Tell Shocking Details Of Strategies To Sell Brooklyn's Public Libraries.)

As Mr.Killackey says, I don’t know what he knows, but what he knows seems to ignore how, at approximately the same time, just after Bloomberg got his third term, he dramatically started cutting funding to libraries even as library use was increasing greatly.  The de Blasio administration, proceeding with library sales, has not restored those cuts.

When The BHA Fought For a Bigger Library and Smaller, More Contextual Buildings

too "bulky" said BHA

The expansion of the Brooklyn Heights library with the 1991-1993 construction effected an increase to the library’s space for which the Brooklyn Heights Association had been fighting for a number of years.  In 1985 when the Brooklyn Heights Association was fighting Forest City Ratner’s huge new One Pierrepont Plaza building planned for erection next to the Brooklyn library as too “bulky,” a deal was reached allowing the Ratner building greater height in exchange for cutbacks at its top and Ratner’s promise to give 12,000 square feet in the building to the library for it to expand into.  This sweetener was intended to deal with the overcrowding at the library’s adjacent site.  (See: Pact on Brooklyn Tower Reached, By Josh Barbanel, October 25, 1985.)  Ratner’s building was completed in 1988.

Library Space Promised to Sweeten Deals For Bigger Development- Not Delivered

Ratner’s 1985 offer of library space as a sweetener to induce approval for a bigger development is reminiscent of how in discussions of transforming libraries into mixed-use redevelopments there has been crass frankness about the manipulative offer of libraries as a “placating gesture” to get the public to approve greater development.  More recently, Two Trees Development offered the public 15,000 square feet of new library space in its BAM South luxury tower as sweetener for a substantial increase in the size of the permitted building, a deal handed out to it from the city by the Bloomberg administration that, like the 1985 Ratner deal, was given away without a bid.

Interestingly, Ratner apparently was never required to make good on its 1985 pact for the libray space sweetener.  Similarly, on May 27, 2007 BPL spokesman David Woloch quietly confessed to CB2’s Youth and Education Committee that instead of providing the 15,000 square feet of library sweetener space in the BAM South project once promised, Two Trees would be giving just 2,500 square feet, one-sixth of what was originally promised.  (See: Friday, February 1, 2013, City Strategy Of Withholding Basic City Services To Blackmail Public Into Accepting Bigger Development.)

The proposed luxury condominium tower that would squash the library down to one-third size dwarfs the adjacent1988 Ratner tower and has no cutbacks.

At a June 10, 2015 BPL presentation to Brooklyn's Community Board 7, Mr. Woloch assured members of the Sunset Park Community that if its library is torn down for redevelopment into a mixed-use facility there will be no bait and switch, that what is promised will be built.  The Sunset Park plans were first disclosed here in Noticing New York with the BPL catching up to give out information afterwards.  In a sense there has been a victory in that for the first time since Citizens Defending Libraries has been on the scene a library being sold is proposed to be enlarged, in this case to 20,600 square feet, virtually the same size the central destination 63,000 square foot downtown library is proposed to be shrunk to.

Illusory Promises- One Reason the BHA is Wrong
 
Unfulfilled and unenforceable promises provide a perfect segue for talking about more of what is wrong with the Brooklyn Heights Association’s position to back the sale and shrinkage of the library.  A top reason the BHA gives for selling and shrinking the library is that, “proceeds from the sale will go to the BPL, which will use them to renovate other branch libraries.”

This is wrong on a number of counts:

    1.    As one of the CB2 Land Use Committee members noted there is no way to assure that net funds, if any, would actually go to such funding of other libraries.  There is no way to track it through or assure that New York City, to whom the money would go, would actually give more money to the libraries as a result.  The city could actually just give less overall to the libraries.  There is only the vaguest idea that morally money ought to come back to the libraries, but the libraries are already funded at an immorally low level, below what was compacted with Andrew Carnegie when he gave libraries to the city.  What's more, if low funding translates this way into hand-offs to real estate developers, we are only apt to see more of this kind of low funding in the future.

    2.    The BPL is being totally untransparent about how there will be virtually no net proceeds from the sale of the library.  It may wind up with a negative cash result.  The BPL is disguising, underestimating and refusing to acknowledge the costs that must be netted out of the transaction.

    3.    The proposed self-cannibalizing sale of this library doesn’t generate resources for the library; it involves a huge loss of library resources.  It would cost $60 million to rebuild the library building.  The building together with the land there and the rights to expand for additional public uses there mean the dollar value fo the library to the public is well over $100 million, probably around $120 million. . . and yet the BPL would net virtually nothing from a sale, perhaps less than zero.  (See: Sunday, June 14, 2015, Selling a $100 Million Plus Library For What? A Pittance! More Transparency Please.)

More On Why the BHA is Off Track, Including The Saint Ann's Problem

The BHA’s testimony also includes a reference to the private Saint Ann's School in weirdly suggesting with rather out-of-the-blue belatedness that perhaps there should be some negotiation for a larger library:

Given the recent announcement that Saint Ann's School will not purchase the space originally assigned to them, we urge the Brooklyn Public Library to consider negotiating with Hudson for additional space in the building. In the event that the underground space is unsold, we welcome Hudson's plan to excavate less of the site.

If the reverse-course shrinkage of this library is truly the colossal mistake most people think it is and the library should therefore be larger, or if in the future it's determined the library should be larger because the city, borough, central business district and surrounding residential neighborhood are all growing fast (which they all are) there is a problem: Stuck in the bottom of a residential luxury tower, the library can never be enlarged afterwards.*  Yet the BHA suggests negotiating for a larger library, but is ready to just shrug if those negotiations don’t work out?  Come now!  How contradictory can you get?

(* Sunset Park has a similar problem where a no-bid. behind-the-scenes process now puts that library on track to be put in the bottom of a residential, not a commercial, building, and also precluded the use of anther better site for the expanded library.)

Perhaps more important, the BHA’s mention of Saint Ann’s School in its testimony is deceptive.  It makes it sound like Saint Ann’s was paying for the space it was getting in the building rather, than as was the case, being paid with the transfer of that space for its development rights.  Remember the developer refusing to say how much Saint Ann’s is being paid?   The BHA’s wording also makes it sound like Saint Ann’s School was no longer going to be involved in the transaction, a misleading impression the developer and BPL apparently tried to foster right before the hearing.

If fact, it must be recognized that private Saint Ann’s School is getting a substantial pay day due to the fact that because the library, a publicly owned asset, is being sold and shrunk, Saint Ann’s can sell its development rights free-and-clear without the nuisance and cost of having to demolish and reconstruct its own building.

Who were the BHA’s library deciders, that core to the BHA committee that passed its judgment that the library should be sold and shrunk in this developer-pleasing transaction?

BHA board member library deciders conferring at the June 17th hearing- Both on the BHA's library committee- Right Alexandra Bowie who delivered testimony- Left Erica Belsey Worth high-end architect and Saint Ann's parent.

Alexandra Bowie, who operated with great secrecy at the beginning, was one of them.  Some years ago when Ms. Bowie was still President of the BHA and Mr. Killackey was still an unelevated board member, my wife and I tried to express concern about what Ms. Bowie had said to us about the users of the library that came to the library from the nearby projects.  Mr. Killackey was dismissive of our concerns.

Architect and Saint Ann's parent Inger Yancey- “The Yancey's were an early founding family of Saint Ann's School.”

Other BHA board members who are library deciders for the BHA and therefore for the entire neighborhood that the BHA is suppose to represent?:  Erika Belsey Worth and Inger Yancey.  Both are architects.  Both are Saint Ann’s parents.  Ms. Belsey Worth designs for those with a more refined taste who can afford it. As for Ms. Yancey, reading the Brooklyn Eagle it is apparently a point of pride that:  “The Yancey's were an early founding family of Saint Ann's School.”   

Frankly, this is unfair and lacks proper process.

A Dead-locked CB2 Land Use Committee and A Declared End To Public Hearing Input While The Developer Continues To Lobby

After the hearing the CB2 Land Use Committee deadlocked and did not vote to approve the library sale and shrinkage.  One reason expressed by committee members was the lack of any true assurance that any funds, net or otherwise, from the sale and shrinkage would actually go back to the libraries.  That concern took hold despite the fact that the BHA blithely ignores that problem.  Another reason expressed was that the committee had previously voted not to approve any big new developments until the infrastructure problem of local school PS8, at 140% over capacity is attended to. .  It was recognized that voting to approve the transfer of the public land to build this tower would have overridden this stance established by the committee’s previous vote. . .

. . .  What we see is a worsening imbalance as we try provide the public infrastructure necessary to keep up with development as privatization of once-public assets accelerates with transfers such of these.

The deadlock was apparently unexpected, the BPL and the developer having timed their progress in requesting a vote to their belief that with behind-the-scenes lobbying they had locked up the votes they needed.

Hopefully the committee was also influenced in its vote by: The public testimony; the BPL’s total lack of transparency with respect to this and other proposed library sales; and the value of the asset being sold versus the insanely low price for which it would be sold off.

As the CB2 Land Use Committee debated its vote there was kibitzing from the some public in attendance calling attention to the fact that two of the CB2 Land Use Committee members are salaried employees of the BHA.  It was asserted that these two members should recuse themselves and not vote.  That’s an interestingly hard call to make because at that very moment those two  members seemed to be doing the right thing and making the right points about why the proposal to sell the library was a problem.  But if the two members who are employees of the BHA were to recuse themselves it could wind up in essentially the same place because a majority of affirmation votes is required for the committee to approve the sale and shrinkage and recusals, like negative votes or abstentions would all similarly subtract from that required total.

The CB2 Land Use Committee is going to be asked to vote on the proposed library sale and shrinkage yet again. 

June 12, 2015 CB2 Executive Committee meeting

At the June 12, 2015 CB2 Executive Committee meeting, CB2 Chair Shirley McRea announced that approval of the proposed sale and shrinkage of the library was being sent back to the committee referring to “an email from the board office.”  Chair McRae said that July 6th was being looked at for the date for the new committee meeting, but that they were having difficulty setting it up. Following the committee meeting she said it was planned that the full CB2 board would take up the matter July 15th.

Ms. McRae told the room:

Now the follow-up meeting to last Wednesday’s meeting, and everyone needs to be very clear on this, the public hearings are closed, There are no more hearings on the BPL.  It’s over.  It's done with.   It was done on Wednesday.  When this committee meets next it will be to do what they were supposed to. .  What should have taken place, what should have taken place at last Wednesday’s meeting without having sat there for three, four, five hours and then trying to come to some decision.  I just want everyone to be clear on that: It is not a repeat of the public hearing.  This is for the committee now to come together and do the business of the committee.

Maybe the “hearing” is technically over, but that Wednesday the 17th, immediately the hearing, the developer was lobbying the committee members to change their votes, so it is not as if the CB2 land Use Committee isn’t still hearing things from the developer.  Hopefully, they will also still be hearing things from the public and it would be nice if one of the things they hear was the Brooklyn Heights Association admitting their decision was seriously flawed and wrong and admitting to the position that we should not be selling and shrinking a valuable library for a pittance.

The BHA we should stand up with us and the rest of the community against these deals that don’t benefit the public, but do benefit private parties with private interests antagonistic to the public’s, a developer sending campaign contributions to the mayor and a private school.

Two Tom Otterness sculptures at the 14th Street Station on the A-Train.  Which way will the library struggles turn out? With book lovers on top?  Or with all our public wealth transferred to the monied interests who will dispense a few pennies as handouts?

Is Forest City Ratner, As Victor, Writing Our History?- WNYC's Press Release on Appointing Forest City Ratner's MaryAnne Gilmartin to Its Board of Trustees

“History is written by the victors.”   That's certainly the old adage that reflexively gets accepted as true by so many of us even without knowing who first said it.

But first the victor must wrest the pen that writes history into its own grasp. . .  That’s what Forest City Ratner seems to be trying to do when it comes to Atlantic Yards and its exploits in New York City.

In October Forest City Ratner’s Chief Executive Officer MaryAnne Gilmartin was appointed to the board of trustees of the board of New York Public Radio, better known as WNYC and its sister station WQXR, according to the press release appointing Gilmartin, “America's most listened-to AM/FM news and talk public radio stations.”  How did that happen?. . .

. . . Certainly not without a lot of maneuvering and purposeful intent on the part of Forest City Ratner.

The WNYC public radio stations are not are not only the “most listened-to” stations; there is also an implicit agreement with their listeners that, because they are listener financed, they can be trusted as a much more reliable source of earnest news reporting, an alternative free from the corrupting influence that saturates commercially owned and operated news media.  Accordingly, for instance, the idea that the WNYC family of stations provides in-depth news and information that is vastly superior to the kind of press release-conduit journalism that commercial stations put out was propounded again and in the sales pitches made during WNYC’s last fund-raising drive, just as that idea has been highlighted in the many years of fund-raisers before.  This most recent WNYC fund-raiser was subsequent to Ms. Gilmartin’s appointment to the WNYC board.

Ms. Gilmartin’s arrival at her policy-making trustee’s position on the WNYC board is reminiscent of another board’s takeover and ensuing 180-degree policy changes seen most clearly with respect to Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards: That of the once venerated Municipal Art Society.

The Municipal Art Society was once thought of as representing the public and standing up to developers in the face of abusive development.  Kent Barwick, when he was the head of MAS, called Atlantic Yards “the poster child for what goes wrong when process is ignored. . . a poorly designed project that has polarized the community and that squanders both opportunity and public trust.”   Not so long ago, MAS had scores of forums about development in the city invoking the name and principles of Jane Jacobs in which, while the moderators kept civil order, the Atlantic Yards mega-monopoly was excoriated by expert panelists and attending public alike, for a zillion villainous transgressions against the public interest.
  
More recently, after an orchestrated reconstituting of the board, essentially, as it was disclosed to me, happening as something of a coup, MAS has reversed itself to the extent that many no longer regard it as representing the public.  This new version of MAS has given not one, but two, awards the to the Atlantic Yards mega-development, essentially praising Forest City Ratner for the kind of neighborhood destruction that was previously decried, an absurdity that’s siren for satire, essentially an award for “preserving a swath of Prospect Heights by tearing it down to build the Ratner Prokhorov Barclays arena while letting the rest of the destroyed neighborhood acreage lie fallow for a few decades.”   (See: Monday, June 16, 2014, Ratner, Gilmartin & the MAS Onassis Medal: selective memory, glitzy gala, and enduring dismay.)

Just a few days ago I ran into a woman who was a new resident of New York who, without knowing any of the history of how MAS’s mission has been recently redirected, told me that she had attended a MAS event and unexpectedly found it an almost unbelievably depressing pro-development spectacle.  I don’t know. .  I wasn’t there, but I do know that there has been a massive exile of those who used to be involved with MAS, including its former president, Kent Barwick, to resurrect The City Club of New York.  What’s left of the former Municipal Art Society seems to have gobs of money, but its soul is and moral compass are lost.  In its place, the new, leaner City Club is shaping up credibly to fill in the void of what MAS once was.

There are, of course, other well-worn sayings about history.  One of the best known is George Santayana’s “When experience (which is history) is not retained...infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” which may be viewed as something of a retread of Cicero’s “Those who have no knowledge of what has gone before them must forever remain children.”  Malcolm X took a crack at essentially the same sentiment with: “History is a people's memory, and without a memory man is demoted to the lower animals.”

It provokes thought and fright to consider that when history is written by the victors it will be rewritten so that those things that should never have happened in the first place will happen again virtually by design.  In other words George Orwell’s, “Whoever controls the past controls the future.” 

This brings to mind another adage about victors and victory: “To the victor go the spoils.”  Getting to write history, the ability to control the past and thereby own the future too, may be viewed as just a subset of the spoils that the victors get to walk away with.

It is not then surprising that at the groundbreaking for the Ratner Atlantic Yards arena, Ratner and Atlantic Yards supporter Mayor Michael Bloomberg seemed to focus wishfully about his expectation of public forgetfulness to cement the highly controversial victories: “nobody's going to remember how long it took. They're only going to look and see that it was done.”  Such ablution via deficient memory extends to the cleansing almost any means-to-an-end in public debate and governance if “only results matter.”  

The sad thing, if Forest City Ratner gets to write the history of Atlantic Yards, is that such writing of our history will not just be the consequence of victory, but another victory unto itself.  Although Forest City Ratner overpowered the public interest and the community to achieve many things it ought never to have achieved, I think it is quite fair to say that the community won a good share of the battles.  The most important was the laying bare of Forest City Ratner’s deceptive practices. That's more important even than the successful adjudication respecting such practices when the community won its environmental lawsuit.  These victories helped ensconce a public understanding of the abuses in the competing narratives of what happened.  In this way, the predatory Forest City Ratner cat was belled to warn those mice who might appeal to the cat as its future meals.

Evisceration of WNYC and the Municipal Art Society is a way of silencing that bell on the cat.  The “Braveheart” quote about writing history, put in the mouth of Robert the Bruce, is “history is written by those who have hanged heroes” with a concordant implication that those dead heroes and their deeds are then written out of our pasts.  That saps the spirit of resistance even further.  The heroes of the Atlantic Yards fight and other community battles may now be largely exhausted, having worked unpaid against well-financed minions.  They may have paid the price of many wounds, made many sacrifices.  We may even now think of some of them as the equivalent of the dead on the battlefield, but it’s truly grievous to think that all their hard work and truth that was brought to light by, for instance, the “No Land Grab” team or the “Battle For Brooklyn” documentary would be forgotten.

Maybe history will be rewritten so that WNYC’s future listeners or those going to next year’s MAS functions devolve, uninformed, into the feckless, perpetual infants or children of Cicero’s and Santayana’s admonitions, but on its own side of the fence Forest City Ratner is not going to forget its perfected playbook.  Similarly, other developers seeing what Ratner got away with will remember and emulate.  Which is to say that whatever battles have been won or lost it is still an ongoing war.

That brings us to what should be a number of critical realizations about the road we are not yet at the end of.  Yes, there is a question as to whether other developers will use, throughout the city, tactics Forest City Ratner used with respect to Atlantic Yards and its other New York City exploits going back to at least 2002, and there is the likelihood that Forest City Ratner’s tactics on future projects will resemble those its used on Atlantic Yards, but. . . .

. . .  Anyone who thinks that Forest City Ratner has won the Atlantic Yards war thinks in very circumscribed terms.

Completion of the Atlantic Yards mega-development from this point on could still take as much as another forty years.*  Even now, twelve years after Forest City Ratner started moving in to take over a swath of Prospect Heights with the threat of eminent domain, it has built only the arena (that's not even technically finished at this point as a corrective new secondary green roof is being built).  It has not built any housing.  It has not replaced any of the residential units it destroyed, including the low-income units it will never actually replace.  It has not replaced the businesses it evicted.  The one attempt Ratner has made to build a residential building stands halted, mired in a lawsuit about incompetence and may have to be torn down to be built again from scratch, its original estimated cost of $155 million now rising to perhaps $215 million or even $265 million.

(*  Even though the new, most recent, contractual deadline now theoretically stands as 2025, with the deal subject to perpetual negotiation with Forest City Ratner in the position of a politically muscular monopoly, no future terms can be assured.)

Forty years, or however many decades it actually takes to complete Atlantic Yards, affords ample opportunity for the community, albeit exhausted, to insist, as it should, that the mega-project be divided up and bid out to multiple developers, restoring the streets, sidewalks and avenues that Forest City Ratner has privatized.  Conversely, it affords opportunities galore for Forest City Ratner to reenact more times than we will be able to count what it has done at juncture after juncture, renegotiate repeatedly the terms of its monopoly to shift benefits increasingly in its favor.

In fact, as an example of how easily things can go one way or another, just recently in June, hardly anytime at all before the residential constructions problems and ensuing litigation about it was to be disclosed in August, something that would have made Ratner extremely vulnerable to finally losing monopoly control over the project especially given the community's litigation victory, Ratner slickly maneuvered, taking advantage of a new administration under the incoming mayor to renegotiate new terms for its deal (and more subsidy), once again more to its advantage.  Not knowing how how income eligibility bands were being rejiggered in the background, the representatives who ventured to negotiate for the community were snookered in the deal they'd probably have been better off never making no matter how good it was made to sound. Without cinching this deal, Ratner might have failed in his desperate deal selling a portion of the mega-project to the Chinese government. 

Consequently, Forest City Ratner is not presently the victor seeking to write history.  Still not yet the victor, it is simply doing what it has done from the start, seeking control of the news media and those who write the news in order control the narrative, in order to be the victor when all is said and done. . . .

If ever a definitive tale is told about the still-ongoing Atlantic Yards saga it is virtually certain to be in the form of the book on the subject that Norman Oder is writing.  Mr. Oder writes Atlantic Yards Report (currently retitled “Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report” in view of the fact that the Ratner firm euphemistically rechristened its project to divorce its self from years of bad press).  Atlantic Yards Report originally began as the “Times Ratner Report” much of its earliest focus being about how irresponsible and misleading the coverage of Atlantic Yards by the New York Times was. 

Conception of the Atlantic Yards project goes back to the summer of 2002.  In February of 2001 an eminent domain land deal was reached that turned Forest City Ratner into a real estate partner with the New York Times to construct its new headquarters.  For more about how the questionable reporting by the Times undoubtedly assisted Ratner’s Atlantic Yards to advance and ultimately succeed as far as it has, see:  Sunday, June 26, 2011, “Page One: Inside the New York Times” Reviewed; Plus The “New York Times Effect” on New York’s Biggest Real Estate Development Swindle.

This means that rather than being anything new, Forest City Ratner's encroachment into the theoretical bastion of public radio and public broadcasting is just a shifting of the previous line of influence, a pushing forward to dominate more completely by extending tactics previously used successfully by Ratner.  In fact, while public radio has done better in the past to escape the influence of Ratner and the real estate industry, the same cannot be said of New York City’s WNET public television station where criticism of the city’s real estate is never heard, but Forest City Ratner has gotten great promotion on Charlie Rose.  (See:  Monday, April 2, 2012, Charlie Rose Does Infomercial For Forest City Ratner and Tuesday, April 3, 2012, Channel 13, New York's Premier Public Television Station, Provides Promotion For The Ratner/Prokhorov Barclays Basketball Arena: What To Do About It?)

Ratner is also well infiltrated into the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Brooklyn Museum.

Ms. Gilmartin’s first WNYC trustees meeting is scheduled to be Wednesday, December 3, 2014.  Before that, Tuesday November 18, 2014, the WNYC Community Advisory Board is meeting at 7:00 PM at St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights.  The Community Advisory Board is supposed to take comment from the public about the station’s operations.  At their last meeting the CAB groused that far too few members of the public come to their meetings.  (With Gilmartin's appointment  they may be on the verge of ironic solution.) 

The WNYC Community Advisory Board was established to comply with the Public Telecommunications Act the purpose of which extends to providing “a source of alternative telecommunications” that will be “responsive to the interests of people.”  To receive public funds public broadcasters must have Community Advisory Boards to review the “programming goals established by the station, the service provided by the station, and the significant policy decisions rendered by the station.”  (emphasis supplied)

Under that rubric, it would seem that Ms. Gilmartin’s appointment to her policy-setting position on the WNYC board should be of vital concern to the CAB.  To argue, contrarily, that it is only a board appointment and that the CAB should wait and be concerned only when station policy actually changes after enough board members of Ms. Gilmartin’s ilk have been appointed would be to say the CAB should react to close the barn door only after there has already been an irreversible escape of the horse.

CAB members face a conundrum in regard to whether they will screw their courage to the sticking point and object to Ms. Gilmartin’s appointment.  According to the by-laws of the Community Advisory Board: “CAB members are subject to the approval of the [WNYC Board of Trustees] or its designees, including members re-nominated for a second term.”- . . .

. . . . That means that, by getting appointed to the WNYC Board of Trustees, Forest City Ratner head MaryAnne Gilmartin now has a say-so about who is on the Community Advisory Board supposedly watch-dogging her implementation of station policy.

Although the Community Advisory Board should probably be recommending Gilmartin's removal from the board and holding up her appointment as an example of what never ought to be done again, if they do, it could subject their members to her vengeance.

Although WNYC is keeping confidential more specifics and the deliberations that were involved, we know that the Trusteeship Committee (comprised of the following Trustees: Tom Bernstein, Martha Fleischman, Anton Levy, Herb Scannell, Lauren Seikaly, Peter Shapiro, Susan Solomon, Nicki Tanner, Andrea Taylor, Keith Thomas, Cynthia King Vance, Laura Walker and Alan Weiler) nominated Forest City Ratner CEO MaryAnne Gilmartin for trusteeship after an evaluation they were supposed to make of her qualifications and suitability for service and probably someone on the committee identified Ms. Gilmartin as a potential candidate for trustee.

Since WNYC is not telling us we have to guess while noting that it could even have been WNYC president Laura Walker who pushed Gilmartin's nomination forward.

A hint that Ms. Gilmartin might have been coming to the WNYC board involved her bizarre appearance back in July accompanied by WNYC president Laura Walker fluffing up a Brian Lehrer show segment about how to get `a good night’s sleep,' something, as commented by me at the time, it's questionable that Ms. Gilmartin actually deserves.  Giving a burnishing heft to Ms. Gilmartin's credentials though not necessarily making her being there seem less odd, Arianna Huffington was also a part of this surreal segment. Oh, Oh, WNYC!  Oh Brian!  See: Wednesday, July 16, 2014, On Brian Lehrer, FCR's Gilmartin reports on CEO Sleep Experiment.

If and when WNYC policies begin to change subsequent to this Gilmartin appointment it is doubtful that we see that change manifest in Brian Lehrer losing his prominent morning slot in the near future: He is expert at what he does, beloved by his audience, young enough to be around for a long time and, although moderating with reasonable fairness, he has never expressed hostility toward Atlantic Yards.  We would be more likely to see change creep in with a replacement of a retiring Leonard Lopate, an older broadcaster who has more regularly acknowledged the legitimate basis for the community's dissatisfactions with the megadevelopment.  It would be nice if Mr. Lopate were around to interview Mr. Oder when his awaited book comes out, but who knows when that will be as the Atlantic Yards saga continues to lumber forward in surprising ways frustratingly postponing any neat point at which to wrap up.  Mr. Lopate could likely be replaced by someone who, on the spectrum, is more more likely to be confused with a corporate lapdog than Brian Lehrer, perhaps friendlier to developers like Ratner than even Charlie Rose.

In pertinent part the press release announcing the appointment of Ms. Gilmartin to its board reads in cheery PR speak as follows:

NEW YORK PUBLIC RADIO ANNOUNCES FOUR ADDITIONS TO ITS BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Richard Brail, MaryAnne Gilmartin, Loretta Brennan Glucksman, and Brad Whitman Named to the New York Public Radio Board of Trustees

(New York, NY – October 9, 2014) – New York Public Radio today announced that Richard Brail, Managing Director and Head of the Media, Entertainment, Communications and Technology Group at Peter J. Solomon Company, and MaryAnne Gilmartin, President and CEO of Forest City Ratner Companies, have been elected to its Board of Trustees. Loretta Brennan Glucksman, Chairman Emeritus of the American Ireland Fund, and Brad Whitman, Vice Chairman in the Financial Institutions Group at Morgan Stanley, were also recently elected to the Board at the Spring meeting of the Board of Trustees.

As a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, New York Public Radio is governed by an independent Board of Trustees that meets regularly throughout the year. There are currently 35 NYPR Trustees, headed by Cynthia King Vance, Chair. Information on all Trustees can be found here.

“Rich, MaryAnne, Loretta, and Brad bring vast experience in business, media and non-profit governance that will advance both the work of the Board and the mission of New York Public Radio,” said Laura R. Walker, President and CEO, New York Public Radio. “I look forward to collaborating with them to keep New York Public Radio at the forefront of digital innovation, award-winning content creation and enterprise journalism that enriches the lives of New Yorkers and audiences around the world.”

“I am delighted to welcome Rich, MaryAnne, Loretta, and Brad to New York Public Radio’s Board of Trustees,” said Cynthia King Vance, Chair, Board of Trustees, New York Public Radio. “These accomplished leaders bring a passion for public radio and new and valuable perspectives to a highly engaged Board of Trustees. We are lucky to have them join us as we reach for even more ambitious heights at New York Public Radio.”

* * * *

MaryAnne Gilmartin is President and Chief Executive Officer of Forest City Ratner Companies. She has been point person in the development of some of the most high-profile real estate projects in New York City. Ms. Gilmartin led the efforts to build Barclays Center and Pacific Park Brooklyn, a 22-acre mixed-use development. Ms. Gilmartin also oversaw the development of The New York Times Building, designed by Renzo Piano and New York by Gehry, the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere, designed by Frank Gehry. In addition to these projects, Ms. Gilmartin has managed the commercial portfolio at MetroTech Center in Downtown Brooklyn, which consists of 6.7 million square feet of Class A office space. Ms. Gilmartin served proudly for over 7 years on the New York City Ballet Advisory Board. Currently, Ms. Gilmartin serves as a Board Trustee for the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM); a Member of the Board of Governors of the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY); and as a Member of the Industry Advisory Board of the MS Real Estate Development Program at Columbia University.

* * * *

New York Public Radio is New York’s premier public radio franchise, comprising WNYC, WQXR, The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, and New Jersey Public Radio, as well as www.wnyc.org, www.wqxr.org, www.thegreenespace.org, and www.njpublicradio.org. As America's most listened-to AM/FM news and talk public radio stations, WNYC extends New York City's cultural riches to the entire country on-air and online, produces award-winning programming for local and national audiences, and curates the best offerings from networks NPR, Public Radio International, American Public Media, and the British Broadcasting Company. WQXR is New York City's sole 24-hour classical music station, presenting new and landmark classical recordings as well as live concerts from the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, and Carnegie Hall, among other New York City venues, immersing listeners in the city's rich musical life. In addition to its audio content, WNYC and WQXR produce content for live, radio and web audiences from The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, the station's street-level multipurpose, multiplatform broadcast studio and performance space. New Jersey Public Radio extends WNYC’s reach and service more deeply into New Jersey. For more information about New York Public Radio, visit www.nypublicradio.org.

# # #   

Press release about Gilmartin appointment, page one, click to enlarge

Press release about Gilmartin appointment, page two, click to enlarge

Ms. Gilmartin brings a "passion for public radio and new and valuable perspectives to a highly engaged Board of Trustees"?  And, we are lucky to have Ms. Gilmartin join WNYC "as we reach for even more ambitious heights at New York Public Radio.”  Really?  Plus there's that cleverly oblique reference that Ms. Gilmartin has been the "point person in the development of some of the most high-profile real estate projects in New York City."*

(*  Commenting on this article Norman Oder in Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report post 11/18/2014 writes:  "Forest City has a passion for shaping perception--such as the erasing-history effort to rename Atlantic Yards as Pacific Park. - So even the capsule biography of Gilmartin, surely supplied by her office for the press release, is part of that effort [incorporated in the WNYC Press Release!]. According to the press release, Gilmartin `led the efforts to build Barclays Center and Pacific Park Brooklyn, a 22-acre mixed-use development.'- Actually, Pacific Park Brooklyn hasn't been built yet. The first tower is stalled. The second break ground next month.")

Another item in the press release that's probably of interest in this context is that Brad Whitman also being appointed to the board, although now with Morgan Stanley, came from Barclays Bank just months before where he was head of mergers for financial institutions.  Barclays is the bank whose name is on the Ratner arena. That prominent public spot was sold to it as advertising, confusing what the public should think about its misconduct.  The world is too entirely too small, isn't it?

(click to enlarge) The kind of public interest advertising we might see in the subway if the public were coming up with funds for what's posted there.  Instead, the recidivist Barclays has the subway station and publicly paid for arena named after it to wash away thoughts of its misdeeds.

Forest City Ratner has never done a project without deep publicly paid for subsidy and it has never done a project where it was selected by competitive bid.  Its modus operandi in pursuing its usually large scale crony capitalistic deals is to get on the political inside, buying elected officials with campaign contributions and then misrepresent what is going on, that which the public is getting and what the public is losing. 

For a little more background on this and Ms. Gilmartin's appointment, see: Saturday, October 11, 2014, The Forest City Ratner Cafe, at the Brooklyn Children's Museum, and Gilmartin's new role on WNYC board, Atlantic Yards Report- Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report- Atlantic Yards, Pacific Park, and the Culture of Cheating, Tuesday, December 1, 2009, Unfair Substitution of Fiction For Fact in the Atlantic Yards Dialogue and Wednesday, July 18, 2012, Noticing New York's Hearing Testimony Re New York City Housing Development Corporation's Subsidization of Ratner's Atlantic Yards Mega-Monopoly.

Am I being too inhospitable, too unwelcoming to Ms. Gilmartin's arrival at WNYC?  Should one's attitude be more of a civilized "live and let live" approach where commercial and noncommercial interests could cohabit in the public broadcasting space, exchanging ideas with he-said/she-said balances?  Would that be the right resolution?  Could we expect that cohabiting commercial interests in public broadcasting would restrain themselves and not use the usual tactics of superior financial resources to overwhelm? . .

. . I don't think so.   Public broadcasting is supposed to be the alternative to other broadcasting already steeped in and motivated by commercialism (dubbed the "vast wasteland" when public broadcasting was conceived- "endlessly screaming, cajoling commercials"), not another sandbox where commercialism can play in a different guise getting elevated to equal footing with the public interest and that which the public wants to pay for.

There are those reading what I write here who will say that public broadcasting is already too infected by and susceptible to the influences of commercialism.  Environmental Action has a current campaign against what are essentially bought and paid for pro-fracking advertisements on public radio:

"NPR has been accepting millions of dollars in "sponsorship" from the fracking front-group known as ANGA. In exchange for their support, NPR hosts like Steve Inskeep, Melissa Block and Audie Cornish routinely read messages that blatantly misrepresent the dangers of fracking to our planet and people.

(See: Fracking the signal.)

Indeed, too often NPR and APR's MarketPlace (we won't review the complicated pluralistic structure of public broadcasters here) have run one-sided stories about how good fracking will be for the economy that appear to have come straight from that industry's press department representatives.  But the fact that these inroads have been made is not a reason to let there be more.

No, Forest City Ratner and MaryAnne Gilmartin don't cohabit nicely in the sandbox with others and they don't share toys.  When they want the property that you have they take it for themselves by eminent domain, stealth, cheating, and dirty and brute politics.  And that is why MaryAnne Gilmartin should not be on the board of New York Public Radio setting policy, including news reporting and public dialogue policy, for the WNYC family of radio stations.

Forest City Ratner As The Development Gatekeeper (And Profit taker) Getting The Benefit As Brooklyn Heights Public Library Is Sold

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

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

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

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

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

Early Suspicions About Forest City Ratner And The Libraries

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

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

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

Plans To Sell Libraries With Money Not Coming To The Libraries

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One-page library MOU: Cause for consternation and joking

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

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

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

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

Provision in recorded document transferring development rights to the Ratner property

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

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

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

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

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

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

Expectation Of A Tall Building, Taller Than Its Surroundings

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

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

    * * * *.

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

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

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

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

What Forest City Ratner Has To Sell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Saint Ann’s property on the block is about 3,979 square feet (these calculations seem to approximately check) and the building is reported to be 27,680 square feet which probably leaves it with about 32,005 square feet of rights to transfer to the library site which could be easily done if it merges zoning lots with the Forest City Ratner property.  Both developer information sessions that day were attended by Matthew Bloom, Director of Finance and Administration for Saint Ann’s School.  (At one point, during the meeting I was at, Mr. Bloom introduced himself to the room and the EDC representative suggested that the developers in the room be in touch with him, but that was about providing space for a temporary library, the subject Mr. Bloom raised, not about development rights.) 

Are there other ways that Rater could be the conduit of additional development rights to further increase the height of the library building?  Indeed there might be, but that a gets into a level of zoning arcana mixed with speculative guessing I am not willing to take on in this article: Ways of connecting Saint Ann's buildings, Bank vaults, tunnels, street condemnations, whether cultural space like the library space (or even Saint Ann's) counts against the permitted heights on the merged zoning lots.  Interesting to note: Those working on the recent creation of the nearby Downtown Brooklyn skyscraper district said that the Brooklyn Heights Library block was intentional excluded from it. 

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

Neighborhood Amenities in the RFP

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Libraries And Their Relationship To Public Transit Benefits

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

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

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

Gatekeeping vs. Owning To Make a Profit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Zoning Calculation" requirement from RFP

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

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


City Officials Represent They Have Not Been Dealing With Ratner

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

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

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

A Lock On Value Where Ratner Holds The Key

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

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

Public Officials Must Stand Guard

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

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

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

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

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

The Mayor And The Library Sell-offs

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

Last week, WNET’s Metrofocus put up this slide of information (below) provided by Mayor Bloomberg about what he wants to accomplish before leaving office.  It says he wants to push through the NYPL’s Central Library Plan, and (something potentially related to its real estate sell-off plans) he wants to push through the extreme upzoning of Mid-Manhattan around Grand Central Terminal. 

The information from Michael Bloomberg’s website engages in the deceptive characterization of the Central Library Plan’s as creating the “largest circulating and research library in the world” when it is actually a shrinkage and sale of libraries, reducing more than 380,000 square feet of library space to just 80,000 square feet.   (Examined at length here: Saturday, July 13, 2013, Deceptive Representations By New York Public Library On Its Central Library Plan: We’re NOT Shrinking Library Space, We Are Making MORE Library Space!)  What Bloomberg is talking about is selling two of NYC’s most important Manhattan libraries and destroying a third.

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

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

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

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