A well-orchestrated campaign to prevent Red Hook from gaining improvements to its library found
success at a meeting of the Landmarks and Land Use Committee of Community Board
Six on Thursday evening. Led by
pro-development interests in Red Hook, in coalition with board members and
other individuals from Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights, and Fort Greene, the
forces opposed to adding amenities to the library won a delay in the
committee’s vote, a possible precursor to killing the project.
Killing the plan would make it more likely that the
amenities would land in a neighborhood such as Park Slope or Fort Greene,
explaining the presence of the activists seeking to forestall action in Red
Hook.
The project, led by a nonprofit group called Spaceworks,
would turn about one-third of the public space in the underused library into
multipurpose rooms, which could be used for a variety of activities including
afterschool programming, rehearsal and classroom spaces for Red Hook’s various
arts groups, as well as more traditional library activities such as reading
groups and community meetings. One of
the primary users of the space would be Cora Dance, which provides afterschool
programming to 200 youth. Cora would be
able to expand its afterschool programs through use of the space. Nearly every person at the meeting, including
many who spoke out against the project, testified to the valuable benefits
provided by Cora’s programs.
The new spaces would have a separate entrance, enabling
their use during the evening hours and weekends when the library is not open.
Among those speaking out against the plan was longtime Red
Hook resident John McGettrick, who has frequently
campaigned against projects that would bring jobs or improved educational opportunities
to Red Hook’s lower-income residents.
Among the projects that McGettrick has opposed are Ikea and Fairway,
which are two of the largest employers in the neighborhood, as well as South
Brooklyn Community High School, which has provided a pathway to a high-school
diploma for many local youth who were not able to find success in previous
school experiences.
Attending along with McGettrick was George Fiala, a local
blogger who has had ties to the real estate industry. In the week leading up to the
meeting Fiala sent out a large number of tweets, Facebook posts, and blog articles
ginning up opposition to the project.
Fiala claimed not to have known of the project until recently, but subsequently
it was revealed that in fact he was well aware of it, having received and
responded to many press releases, mailings, and emails announcing the project. Fiala has not said why he withheld information about the project until the last minute.
Fiala, in his guise of journalist, did not speak publicly at
the meeting, but afterward wrote two editorial pieces detailing his objections
to the project. In the latter of these,
he accused Spaceworks of “colonialism”, and then suggested Cora should look to
the real estate industry for support. Supporting Cora, it may be assumed, would
help pave the way for developers to remake the Red Hook landscape, a different form of colonialism that Fiala
apparently supports.
Fiala and other opponents managed to turn out several
individuals from more wealthy neighborhoods, such as Judi Francis, an activist from Brooklyn Heights,
and Lucy Koteen of Fort Greene. Koteen, whose neighborhood abounds in
performing arts spaces like BAM, BRIC, Mark Morris, and the Irondale Center,
seemed unaware that Red Hook has almost no equivalent spaces. She was in attendance with several members of
a group called “Citizens Defending Libraries,” who in their campaign against the
Brooklyn Public Library’s management appear
to be using Red Hook as cannon fodder.
Also in attendance was Eric Richmond, who owns a space
called the Brooklyn Lyceum in Park Slope. Richmond’s objections to the project
were quoted extensively in the Brooklyn Paper. He has been mired in a
years-long battle to save his space from foreclosure, and it might be that
his interest in the affairs of Red Hook is the result of the fear of the
competition that might come from the proposed spaces. Richmond may also want to obtain the Spaceworks funds for
his own purposes.
A small but vocal group of Red Hook residents heckled
speakers and disrupted the meeting with comments dismissive of the proposal,
the library, and Cora. Among the Red
Hook residents in attendance were several who have emerged as reliable allies of those who would seek to
gentrify Red Hook at the expense of current community residents. They included prominent supporters of the
$23,000-per-year Basis Independent School which is being erected in an
industrial zone of Red Hook – a zone developers would love to convert to
high-priced residential buildings for the sort of individuals who can afford
Basis. The school is the first beachhead
in this battle. Other Red Hookers who spoke out against the project were
several employees of the Red Hook Initiative, which competes with Cora for funding
and participants in afterschool programming.
A number of those present used the tactic of praising Cora
and the intent of the project, and then proposing pie-in-the-sky alternatives
that stand no chance of succeeding. McGettrick dismissively acknowledged the
merits of the project, and then proposed a fanciful and unrealistic alternative
of placing the multipurpose spaces on the roof of the library. Representatives of Spaceworks and the library
said that such a solution was unaffordable and impractical for a number of
reasons. Wally Bazemore, one of the Basis supporters, suggested that Cora
should simply obtain money for rehearsal and classroom space from Ikea. Bazemore
seemed unaware that Ikea has provided very limited support to local arts
organizations in the decade it has occupied a corner of Red Hook. Similarly,
other “supporters” of Cora suggested going to public officials for support,
perhaps unaware that a typical appropriation from a council member to a small
community group might total five to ten thousand dollars - certainly not enough to build out a space suitable for teaching young children.
Prominent among the Community Board members speaking out
against the plan was Hildegaard Link, a Park Slope resident. Link lives close to the Park Slope branch,
which has meeting rooms for the public, as well as the Central Library, which
has three meeting rooms, an 189-seat auditorium, and a café – so she is
obviously familiar with the kinds of services and amenities modern libraries
provide. Nevertheless, for Red Hook, she
said, the library should only have books.
She extolled a vision of the Red Hook library as a place solely for “the
written word, the spoken word, and the listened-to word” – the finest library
of the nineteenth century, perhaps.
Other community board members echoed this sentiment. These members seemed to be implying that they think the illiterate children of Red Hook do not deserve more
advanced amenities such as arts programming until they learn how to read.
The board tabled the proposal, expressing a desire for
further information from Spaceworks and the library. Absent a sea change in public expressions of
opinion about the project, it seems doomed to fall prey to the ongoing strategy
of pitting neighbor against neighbor in Red Hook, while developers and
wealthier neighborhoods reap the benefits.
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