The Brooklyn Borough Board last night approved the sale of the Brooklyn Public Library’s Cadman Plaza Library at 280 Cadman Plaza West for $52 million to developer David Kramer and his Hudson Companies to develop a 36-story condominium residential high rise with a new 26,260-square foot library on the bottom floors.
Voters included representatives from the borough’s community boards and City Council delegation and came at Brooklyn Borough Hall before a crowd of about 40 people who strongly opposed the same and vowed to continue to stop the sale with a lawsuit.
But for City Council Stephen Levin, who represents the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood where the library is located, and who agreed with the sale, it was a matter of making the best of a deal to help the alleged cash=strapped BPL.
As first proposed, the deal was for a 36-story tower, which would house a 21,500-square-foot library – a little more than 10,000-square feet less than the current library – retail space and 139 market-rate condos. The deal also included 114 units of questionable affordable housing to be built on Atlantic Avenue offsite.
However, after negotiations with library officials and the developer, Levin got another 5,000-square feet for the new on-site library plus the development of a brand new 5,000 square foot library to serve the DUMBO, Vinegar Hill, and Farragut Houses communities; a 9,000 square foot new building at Cadman Plaza West dedicated to STEM education labs administered by the NYC Department of Education and serving students in Brooklyn’s Community School District 13; and the library sharing some profits with the developer once a certain threshold of profitability is reached.
Kramer said he expects a groundbreaking in the third quarter of this year and that then entire buildout to take about three years.
Levin said he doesn’t feel that the selling of the library will lead to a sell-off of other Brooklyn Library branches because the current one-story branch at Cadman Plaza is in a neighborhood that accommodates construction of large-scale buildings as of right without any needed zoning changes.
“Most other branches in the system are in lower-lining areas and would likely require zoning changes,” he said.
Currently, the BPL is looking to also sell the Sunset Park branch to the non-profit Fifth Avenue Committee in a proposal to build affordable housing on the site witha new library on the ground floor. The Fifth Avenue Committee has close ties to both Mayor Bill de Blasio and City COuncil Member Brad Lander, who once served as its executive director.
