Libraries: Mixed-Use Messages
Posted by Mark Jenkins
In 2003, the Williams administration made some noises about replacing the Tenleytown library with a mixed-use structure that would include a new library as well as residential and possibly commercial space. The neighborhood reacted skeptically, and the trial balloon was deflated.
It now turns out, however, that the concept wasn't abandoned; it was just quietly moved across town. The city has been sketching plans to replace the Benning Library—which, like Tenleytown and two others, has been closed since the end of 2004—with a mixed-use building that would pair a new library with artists’ work/live apartments.
At an evening meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 4, dozens of community members reacted strongly against the plan, and the scheme's exponents were clearly on the defensive. But they were also prepared. After a reportedly stormy meeting just a few days before, on Sept. 30, the planners introduced a structure devised to minimize critics’ opportunities to speak.
The meeting took place in the board room of the Marshall Heights Community Development Organization, the partially city-funded nonprofit that is the developer of record for the remake of the Benning Library as a mixed-use building. The group, whose office borders the shuttered library, is technically independent of the city but has clearly worked closely with D.C. officials on the Benning plan.
The meeting was moderated by Connie Spinner, who was director of the D.C. State Office of Education until 2004, when she resigned after city auditors found improper travel expenses and misuse of federal grant money. (She was promptly rehired to run the Mayor's Adult Literacy and Lifelong Learning Initiative.) Identifying herself as a “facilitator,” Spinner set “ground rules” that were part kindergarten, part psychobabble. She then used these guidelines in an attempt to limit questioning of the principal presenters: D.C. Public Library Capital Construction Director Jeff Bonvechio; Derrick Woody, coordinator of the Great Streets Initiative for the Office of Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development; and Jair Lynch, the developer hired by the Marshall Heights CDO (on what he called “a fee-for-service” basis) to get the structure planned and possibly built.
Carrie Thornhill, president of the Marshall Heights CDO, also spoke briefly, apologizing if she misjudged the community's level of interest in the project. This misjudgment was a major part of the controversy, since the Oct. 4 event had been billed as the last public meeting on a proposal that many in the neighborhood had just discovered. Speaking for Thornhill, Spinner promised that “this is a continuing dialogue.”
It became clear, however, that the dialogue had begun long before local residents were allowed to have their say. The most revealing presentation came from Woody, who disclosed that mixed-use redevelopment plans are in consideration for several library sites, and that “the policy direction we were given is to look at a mix of uses.” He argued that the Shaw community is “coming around” to a plan to redevelop the closed Watha T. Daniel Library as a multi-use structure, and revealed that Tenleytown “will probably come up again as well.”
The library redevelopment process can apparently sustain itself for some time without ever coming into the glare of D.C.'s sunshine laws. Woody said that the R.L. Christian library kiosk on H Street N.E.—a tiny facility without a professional librarian—is well on the way to being replaced by a mixed-use building. But in response to a question, Bonvechio that the D.C. Library Board of Trustees has yet to hear a formal presentation on the R.L. Christian plan.
Later, Lynch claimed that “at no point has the library done more than just listen” and that the Marshall Heights CDO's “process is running in parallel with the library's.”
Several local artists extolled the Benning Library multi-use proposal, but most of the audience seemed dubious. After the official presentations, Spinner reluctantly allowed Eddie Rhodes, the local advisory neighborhood commissioner, to speak. Neighborhood residents “just don't want housing on top of their library,” he said. “I've polled over 1,000 people, and only about five people approved.”
That may not be a scientific poll, but it's clear that there's a lot of neighborhood distrust of the city's plan. Ironically, some of that doubt probably would have been dispelled if the city and its allies had started with the sort of open dialogue that Thornhill contends will now ensue.
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5 Comments:
At 5:38 AM, Richard Layman said...
This is an instance where I have to say that I respectfully disagree. It makes sense to accomplish multiple objectives from public assets. A piece of s*** portable library isn't the best library neighborhoods ought to have. And it's reasonable to use the "air" above to accomplish other social and public policy objectives.
E.g., I think it's laudable that the H Street site proposes 100% affordable housing on floors above, as well as a better and expanded library.
I can't think of a much better use for the space above the ground floor (unless it were to be more library).
The Benning Library is the exact configuration of the library on H Street and is equally pathetic. I think residents of the city deserve, and can have, more.
Instead of visceral opposition, why isn't this considered a sound application of Jane Jacobs' principle of mixed primary uses?
At 3:02 PM, Anonymous said...
I agree in this case, with Mr. Layman. I never understood why the negative reaction to public-private partnerships.
Certainly the Oyster School seemed to work out well, and there is no reason why the Tenley Library has been shuttered for so long.
At 4:18 PM, Anonymous said...
Whatever the theoretical merits of Mr. Layman's arguments, the sad fact is that almost no one trusts the Administration to deliver on a better library- which would be the public benefit portion of these mixed use public/private facilities.
And why should they? It's very unlikely that the average resident, upon walking into the average DC library and assessing it, will recognize that library as a priority for the Administration.
The DC government has years of library mis-management and neglect to overcome before people will believe the point of all this isn't for DC to divest itself of an asset it first degraded.
At 3:57 PM, Anonymous said...
The Marshall Heights Community Development Organization (MHCDO), which has a weak financial rating in the non-profit world, has proposed mixed-use development for the Benning Library as follows: several stories of below-market- cost rental apartments cum studios for artists, with the DC Public library on the ground floor. Then it packed the most recent public meeting with local artists who, predictably, greeted the plan with hosannas. Not only was there no community input sought by the MHCDO, despite its having a $650,000 budget to assess the feasibility in the community of this particular mixed-use housing/library plan -- but also the sort of mixed use proposed seems a bit loopy. Yes, artists need affordable housing. But so do many others. And doesn't the community need many other things more urgently? Was there no consideration for combining a library with -- let's say -- an adult literacy center, daycare, bookstore, career counseling center, health clinic, for profit small business, tutoring or job training center, Health Club, even university level classes for adult continuing education for adults. The artist-housing idea seems like a (cynical)way to gain quick but knee-jerk community approval without regard to the whole community's most pressing needs. There has been no community survey done by the MHCDO to justify what it is offering in its request to the DC Public Library's board of trustees.
Footnote: who decides which artists get housing? How is such a rental building managed? And The MHCDO is proposing to the citizens of DC that it use a publicly owned building to create a large rental building - which it will own -- on top of the library, which the citizens will own. What do citizens get out of this?
At 10:29 PM, Robin Diener said...
First, a minor correction to Mr. Layman's points: the Benning library is not a "portable" library (kiosk) like the tiny H Street facility, but an 18,000 square foot, full-service branch library, built in 1962 and engineered, like all of the libraries built under the DC Public Works Project, to have another
floor added should the need arise. It was closed in 2004 to be rebuilt without any real consideration of renovation possibilities.
Second, the Library Renaissance Project has found that much opposition to public/private partnerships comes not from pure ideological positioning but from real practical objections, such as 1) the District's apparent inability to enforce agreements with developers (the Ritz Carlton in the West End is an example: there, a park and retail have never materialized though they were promised five years ago, 2) the lack of a meaningful community planning process in which objections could be examined and resolved before the "visceral" reaction sets in, a reaction often set off by the secrecy in which these plans are conceived and carried out, and 3)the healthy skepticism from library patrons at the listening sessions held last winter across the city, that the same library operations and oversight that allowed our public library system to fall into such dire disrepair are unlikely to be better at maintaining new buildings. Citizens asked that improvements to maintenance and operations generally be put in place first. And while a new Chief Librarian seems to be making inroads, we are far from there.
Finally, the unwillingness to see irreplaceable public space simply given away is understandable on the part of citizens of the Benning neighborhood, who were told that the advantage of building housing over
the Benning library is that it would get the library built sooner. To a
community that has waited two years to hear word one from the leaders of
DCPL and the District, after their perfectly serviceable library was closed, arguing urgency now is disingenuous.
The public is right to ask: What does it get out of giving some developer or DCD the chance to add a multi million dollar complex to its portfolio?
Finally, as someone who attended the charettes at Benning, I note that the community objected to the concept of housing for a variety of reasons, not necessarily to mixed-use. Mixed-use projects involving housing and libraries have been built elswhere. It would have been responsible of MHCDO to investigate how other projects have addressed the concerns raised by the Benning residents, and then presented those findings to the attendees of the charettes.
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