Court Square Library (Google)
Jan. 7, 2020 By Allie Griffin
The Court Square Library will be closing next month and residents are holding a rally Wednesday to put pressure on Queens Public Library to ensure the branch has a new home.
Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer, Friends of Court Square Library and the Court Square Civic Association will be holding the rally at the 25-01 Jackson Ave. branch to call on the Queens Library to find permanent and temporary space so that service can continue.
The Queens Library, which has operated the branch out of a 3,200-square-foot ground floor space at the Citigroup Building since 1989, must vacate the building when the lease ends March 31.
The branch will close to the public sometime in February, with an exact date to be announced by the end of the week.
The Queens Library is closing the branch before the lease termination date so that there is ample time for packing and restoring the space.
The branch serves 100,000 people each year and provides access to 10 workstations, free internet access, Microsoft Office software, free printing and free wireless access.
Organizers hope the rally will pressure QPL to develop a short-term and long-term solution to the closure of branch.
Community members are also concerned about its closure since the branch is one of the few indoor public spaces in the area.
The rally begins at 10 a.m. in front of the branch.
On Thursday at 10 a.m., the Friends of Court Square Library will host a meeting at the library to discuss future service.
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10 Comments
JVB. Please press Wolkoff. He helped you before, giving you thousands of dollars….and you helped him w/ 5Pointz in the past. Demand, as did CB2 did back in October that Wolkoff house the library at 5 Pointz. https://licpost.com/5pointz-developer-surprised-by-community-board-2s-ask-for-a-library
perhaps you too can get a non-handicap accessible, cracks in the floor, $20M over budget library…….. in 2033.
OH geez you knew it had a 30 year lease, and you did nothing to make sure it was renewed or relocated till it becomes an emergency
Perhaps no one realized they wouldn’t be able to renegotiate the current space until it was too late, but alas, developers don’t care about the community and educational spaces, just like they don’t care about green space.
And JVB is the Chairperson for Libraries on the NYC Council. Instead of pointing fingers JVB needs to look in the mirror. JVB failed us here! As chair of the committee on libraries JVB should have been working with QPL to avoid the situation we are in today. This is purely an attempt for votes. JVB, you don’t fool us!
ITS A GOD DAMN SHAME IS WHAT IT IS
Jimmy should call upon the Wolkoffs; afterall they helped him in 2013 when JVB received thousands of dollars from Jerry Wolkoff and other Wolkoff family members…. or did Jimmy return that money (after-all those thousands of $$s were real-estate $$s).
Too bad they aren’t fighting to keep it in the same space. How long will that space remain empty after the library vacates? The empty retail space on 44th drive has been empty since the building opened.
Savanna, the owners of CitiBank aren’t interested in having the Library there. They plan on remodeling the entire ground lobby floor into a food hall of sorts and need the entire space vacant to remodel it.
Ultimately Savanna plans on selling their ownership stake of the building after renovating it.
The Citibank people will probably turn the library into a rent-generating space so that they can make money at about $100.00 per square foot or more.