Another Brooklyn Library Prepares to Be Swallowed by Housing Development

Attempts by the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) to save its crumbling branches from ruin are attracting fierce opposition from community groups — first in Brooklyn Heights, and now in Sunset Park.

On Saturday at 10 a.m., more than 100 protesters gathered in front of Sunset Park’s well-worn library at 5108 4th Avenue and shouted their disapproval for a new development planned for the site.

“We couldn’t believe the turnout to the event,” says Christopher Robles, a local attorney and member of a small neighborhood group called Village of Sunset Park. “The community is really rallying around this issue. They’re very frustrated because they feel like their voice isn’t being heard.”

Also in attendance at the rally were members of another, larger organization, Citizens Defending Libraries, which has been the main voice of opposition against another library development plan in the more affluent neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights.

The two plans have a similar gist: Brooklyn Heights’ library would become the ground floor of a gleaming tower of condos overlooking Cadman Plaza Park. Sunset Park’s library would become the ground floor of a (somewhat less gleaming) eight-story apartment building filled with 49 units of affordable housing.

But BPL officials insist the two plans are unrelated and unique to the needs of two very different communities.

In Brooklyn Heights, the condo-library developer would pay for the construction of the new library, and the city would pump $40 million from the sale back into the larger library system. In Sunset Park, the developer is actually an NGO — the Fifth Avenue Committee, or FAC. The FAC has promised to expand the library from around 12,000 to 20,000 square feet and rent the apartments above it to locals, civil servants, disabled residents and victims of domestic violence.

“Rents for these units will be calculated against real-world income levels in Sunset Park,” Sunset Park City Councilman Carlos Menchaca, who supports the plan, tells Kings County Politics. “There are no luxury or market rate units at all and there are firm protections against any future conversion to market rates.”

The FAC proposes the following rent prices in its plan:

• 9 studios – average rent between $480 and $780 depending on income
• 12 one-bedroom units – from $560 to $860 per month
• 9 two-bedroom units – from $650 to $1,025 per month
• 9 three-bedroom units – from $770 to $1,185 per month
  
• 10 units (throughout bedroom units) will be offered at slightly higher rents,but still well below market rents, as part of the mixed-income strategy of this building
• 1 Super’s Unit (2 BR)

However, Robles and other opponents of the plan are skeptical that these promises will become reality.

“It’s very murky about who’s going to get in there,” Robles says. “They’re saying affordable housing, but what does that mean anymore?”

Sunset Park’s library is one of the most heavily trafficked BPL branches.

”The real issue is what’s going to happen to our library,” Robles says. ”There are children who need to go there to do homework. People go there to use computers and Internet — people who don’t have Internet at home. It really is crucial to the neighborhood.”

Image courtesy of the FAC.