Reject the condo library

THREE YEARS AFTER voters passed a $105 million bond issue to build and renovate branch libraries around the city, the San Francisco Public Library has put a proposal with a troubling precedent before the Board of Supervisors.

As Matthew Hirsch reports on page 12, the proposal boils down to this: A $3.4 million plan to put the Glen Park branch library on the second floor of a private condominium complex that houses a store and 15 residential apartments. This would be the city's first condo library, but it might set a precedent for more public-private partnerships (the library is already talking Visitacion Valley) and for more such suspect ways for private business to nibble away or steal outright a valuable public asset.

For openers, the project brought forth a wide spectrum of library, neighborhood, and environmental activists with good points and questions. Does a public library supported by big chunks of public bond money belong in a private condominium on private land in a commercial district? Why is a key neighborhood facility and meeting place given second-class status on the second floor? What's the rush in a down market to do this deal instead of pursuing a better one? What are the risks and limitations that Glen Park must accept for sharing facilities with a grocery story and residential tenants? Why can't Glen Park have a stand-alone library it can be proud of? Is this the wave of the future for the rest of the millions in Proposition A in bond money?

None of these questions was satisfactorily answered at the Aug. 13 Board of Supervisors' Finance and Audits Committee hearing. Moreover, Sup. Bevan Dufty, who pushed the project full tilt, nastily characterized the opposition as obstructionists. We would like to see more obstruction until these reasonable questions are answered and the city isn't led into yet another questionable public-private cul-de-sac. We would like to see Sups. Aaron Peskin and Jake McGoldrick – who went along with only murmurs and whispers – take a second look and lead the board into doing the right thing. Send the project back and tell the Public Library to start listening to the community and stop condo-izing its branches.