Updated July 28, 11:51 a.m.

Library gets $2M to open doors on Cannon Place

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Book lovers of Van Cortlandt Village received big news when local officials announced they were allocating $2 million for a new branch library to open at 3882 Cannon Place – a long-vacant building with a turbulent history.

The Cannon Place address had been the focus of bitter disputes over the past decade between a developer who wanted to use the site for “supportive housing” – and community residents who opposed his vaguely worded plans.

Assemblyman Jeffery Dinowitz, Councilman Andrew Cohen, state Sen. Jeff Klein and Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. announced on July 20 that they have secured $500,000 each in capital funding for the Van Cortlandt branch of The New York Public Library to help it relocate.  

The library is preparing to move to Cannon Place from its current – and much smaller – space at 3874 Sedgwick Ave.  

It’s terrible, it’s very small, there is no room for programming while people are using the stacks.” Mr. Cohen said in an interview.

The New York Public Library already leases space at Cannon Place, and is in the final stages of buying the building, Mr. Cohen said. But Van Cortlandt library manager Peter Pamphile said the branch only leases its current location on Sedgwick Avenue, but not the Cannon Place building it plans to buy.

The proposed location offers 5,847 square feet of space, more than double that of the current building, which has housed the library since 1968.

The new building is only a couple of blocks or so away from the current location, but it sits on a residential side street. While the unorthodox arrangement might take some getting used to, the new building comes with an outdoor space and a patio.

“So, it would be nice to have certain events, particularly for the little ones,” Mr. Dinowitz said in an interview. “It's going to be wonderful.”

The library-relocation project ends years of legal battles and clamorous arguments over the Cannon Place site. 

In 2006, neighborhood activists complained to city officials that a developer, Ismael Fernandez, was trying to build three attached two-family homes on a lot that was zoned to accommodate two detached homes. After a series of appeals, Mr. Fernandez eventually had to scrap those plans, knock down the half-completed structure and start again from scratch.

His next project was to build a three-story “community facility” with 21 units. Neighbors and community activists were by then wary of his plans and called for an investigation. The city’s Buildings Department concluded that the developer had been building a project more than twice the size of what is permitted there under zoning regulations.

The two-story structure that currently sits on the site was the developer’s third project, which he billed as a “supportive housing” facility – a designation that can mean anything from a senior center to a halfway house. Neighbors protested, demanding to know who would be moving in. In early 2009, the Buildings Department ordered the developer to stop construction, saying his application was too vague.

“For over 12 years [community activists have] fought for responsible development at this long-troubled location where an unscrupulous developer tried repeatedly to violate our zoning laws,” a deputy chief of Fort Independence Park Neighborhood Association, Margaret Groarke, said in a statement.

The association “also strongly supports a larger, up-to-date public library in our community.  Bringing a new library to this long vacant building is a win-win,” she said.

The question that remains unanswered, however, is the fate of the library’s current building, a single-story structure adjacent to the Van Cortland Jewish Center, a modern Orthodox synagogue.

Andrew Kimerling, a neighborhood resident who heads the board of directors of a local co-op, expressed concerns that a developer may seek to claim the Sedgwick Avenue site to build a high-rise apartment complex.

These apprehensions, Mr. Dinowitz conceded, are far from unfounded, but there are more questions than answers at this point.

The Sedgwick Avenue building “could be renovated for something else, it could be knocked down and something bigger – I hate to say it – could conceivably be built there,” Mr. Dinowitz said.

“I would certainly understand that people would be concerned about more crowding and everything,” he said. “But in order to have a new library, this is what has to be done. The current location for the library – there’s just nothing that could be done to make it suitable for the needs of the community.”

Despite some concerns, the plan to use the Cannon Place building to host the library received cheers from local residents and librarians alike.

“We are excited. Everyone is excited. We’re thinking of all the possibilities and new exciting things that you can do in the building,” Mr. Pamphile, the library manager, said in a phone interview.

Relocating the library – a process that involves large-scale renovations at the new site – is expected to take months, and the new branch is unlikely to open its doors until after the new year rolls in.

The Cannon Place structure “was built for other purposes … so they have to knock down walls and stuff like that, to make it suitable for a library,” Mr. Dinowitz said.

Plans to allocate the funds for a new library in Van Cortlandt Village first became public in February, when Mr. Diaz mentioned the project in his state of the borough address.

Bronx Community Board 8 Chairman Daniel Padernacht also welcomed the funding for the new library site.

“The Van Cortlandt branch library serves thousands of individuals in our area, and an enhanced facility is greatly needed in our community,” the statement reads. “We are thankful to our elected officials for setting aside funds for the relocation of the Van Cortlandt branch library to a larger, state of the art facility, in order to provide greater services to our community.”

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Lisa Herndon contributed reporting to this story

 

 

Library, Jeffery Dinowitz, Andrew Cohen, Jeff Klein, Ruben Diaz, Anthony Capote, Anna Dolgov

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