Dallas City Councilman Adam Bazaldua, Manya Shorr, Paul Ridley
DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
Taffet@DallasVoice.com
Correction: The Skyline branch is still open. The Skillman Southwestern branch closed last fiscal year.
Original story:
A few years ago, I and three other local gay men had each lost our husbands within a few weeks of each other. So, we decided to form a a grief group for people like us who had lost a same-sex spouse. We needed a place to meet, and the Oak Lawn Library welcomed us with care, compassion and open arms.
About 50 people came through the group before it went online for the pandemic.
How many other people over the years needed a place to meet and found a welcome at the library? And what price can be put on that? It seems the city of Dallas may be having to decide very shortly exactly what that price might be.
Budget constraints have caused the city to ask the Dallas Public Library to cut $1.9 million from its budget this year and another $2.6 million next year.
To do that, Dallas Public Library Director Manya Shorr and her staff have come up with a plan to establish a regional model of service for the Dallas Public Library system, with five branch libraries becoming flagship locations while four other branch libraries would close.
Among those four on the chopping block is the Oak Lawn library. The other three are Arcadia Park, Renner-Frankford and Skyline. The Skyline branch has already closed. Based on a plan presented Tuesday, Jan. 20, to the city’s Quality of Life, Arts and Culture Committee meeting, the target date for closing the other three is Oct. 1.
The five branches chosen as flagships have some of the largest facilities and meet certain metrics, according to Shorr’s presentation. Those on the closing list were on the bottom of the list based on those same criteria.
Yes, we know the Oak Lawn branch is bursting at the seams. It needs twice as much room, not elimination. In addition, the Oak Lawn library is the busiest voting center in the city, election after election. Each Election Day and during early voting, there’s a line around the building — partially because the meeting room where voting takes place is not large enough.
Branches that will become flagships have a variety of amenities, like having a blackbox theater, Shorr explained as she met with the committee on Tuesday. And according to Shorr, 87 percent of Dallas residents live within a 15-minute drive of a proposed flagship branch.
(Well, maybe 15 minutes if you time it just right with traffic and construction.)
But, according to Councilman Paul Ridley, that doesn’t take into account that Oak Lawn is a walk-in branch not a drive-to branch. And the 75219 zip code, including the blocks surrounding the library, has the highest population density in the city.
Rather than walk to the Oak Lawn branch, the library director expects residents to drive 15 minutes to a branch north of Northwest Highway or take what DART figures is a 52-minute bus ride to that branch.
Ridley pointed out to Shorr that Oak Lawn housed the largest circulating collection of LGBTQ+ books in the country. But Shorr objected, claiming New York and Austin are among cities that have larger such collections.
Dallas had the largest collection when it was acquired from a private collection in Florida.
The library hasn’t kept up with other cities, however, as they expanded their collections.
But Ridley was right to question where the collection would go. He said he doubted people who felt comfortable looking through and borrowing the material in Oak Lawn would have the same level of comfort in a branch somewhere in North Dallas.
Plans on where that collection would end up are vague: Maybe it would go to the flagship Bachman branch on Webb Chapel Road. Maybe it would end up downtown. Or what about Grauwyler? That’s the closest branch to Oak Lawn.
Other branches
Councilwoman Laura Cadena objected to the closing of the Arcadia Park branch in her district. She said people in the area of this branch don’t necessarily have a way to get to another branch. And Arcadia Park is attached to a DISD school and serves as the school library as well. How will that work? Would DISD take over the branch? Would the school simply not have a library.
Shorr didn’t have an answer.
Councilwoman Cara Mendelsohn represents a district that includes the Collin County portion of the city of Dallas. Included in her district are 55,000 residents and the Renner-Frankford Branch of the Dallas Public Library. She said the only other public buildings in the Collin County portion of Dallas are two fire stations.
One election, when the library wasn’t available for voting, officials moved the polling place to one of the firehouses. That meant the firetrucks had to park in the street, and there was no parking for voters.
“There’s no rec center, no large churches to move to,” Mendelsohn said.
She pointed out that if the library closes, and the city sells the building, there would literally be no lots to purchase if the library decides to serve that portion of Dallas again in several years.
Most libraries are built with city bond money. Whether the building is paid off will factor into final choice for closing the facility. Oak Lawn was not built with bond money.
Before the current library on Cedar Springs Road was built, the Oak Lawn Library sat in the middle of what is now Kroger’s parking lot. The supermarket and the city made a deal that, as part of its purchase of the land, Kroger would build a new library on the corner of Cedar Springs Road and Knight Street.
That store is among the most successful for the chain in Dallas. Kroger officials have indicated in the past that the company would like to extend the store by widening the current building to Knight Street. In order to have enough parking for a store that size, the company would need to acquire the library building and tear it down.
All of the council members on the committee told Shorr they objected to not receiving advance notice of the closings. Councilman Adam Bazaldua called the presentation “a half-assed plan and disrespectful to many communities.”
With the outrage of council members over the four library closings, little attention was paid to the five flagship branches and the central library which, under Shorr’s plan, would be open seven days a week and would restore evening hours until 8 p.m. four days a week. Currently, all branches are open only six days with limited evening hours.
The J. Erik Jonsson Central Library, located at 1515 Young St., will be addressed in March. It serves the city in a number of ways, including having one of the top 10 genealogical collections in the country. The downtown library also serves as a repository for Dallas history, and it is home to an original copy of the Declaration of Independence and Shakespeare’s First Folio printed in 1623.
The committee ended the meeting with an agreement to meet with Shorr again in March, asking her to bring new ideas to the table at that time. A press release from the city later in the day on Tuesday said that Shorr’s presentation to the committee that morning “was an opportunity to get initial feedback” from committee members. City staff will now “incorporate the feedback received and we will continue to do our due diligence.”
The press release continued, “We are also planning to partner with the Friends of the Dallas Public Library on a community survey before coming back to the committee. As a result, the regional library community meetings scheduled for late January and early February will be rescheduled to a later date.”
With the amounts of money to be cut, it seems the only way to get that much money “saved” is to monetize (i.e., sell) the locations and their contents. Can’t get there with decrease in number of employees or fewer open hours.
Sometimes, I wonder if these “closings” might be covertly fueled by “developers” rather than otherwise? Or “city staff” who are oriented toward more taxable value for a property in the city?
Libraries provide SERVICES, while generating a bit of revenue in the process. That business model does not mix well in a capitalist society, by observation. Yet, like Police and Fire, the base city taxes must fund everything, to every citizen’s mutual benefit.
Libraries provide information and learning functions for those that seek those things. In a time when many (private) charter schools do not have in-house libraries, a public library has become much more important for those that seek additional knowledge of the city and world we live in. As a different type of MUSEUM.
To me, it does NOT matter if the Oak Lawn Library has “a largest collection of ______”, compared to Austin, Houston, or where ever, just the fact IT HAS those collections is of major importance AND anybody can view the items.
I’m suspecting the library has already been upgraded to the most energy-efficient lights, hvac, and insulation items? Or has “maintenance been deferred” as what I heard was done at the current City Hall building? As if “somebody” wanted these things to fail and did not fix/upgrade things as needed?
The City of Dallas is supposed to be “A Beacon of hope and prosperity” for many. Keeping Public Libraries open, active, and relevant to their adjacent communities is a part of that “Beacon of Hope”. Having many that have prestigious collections makes them that much better.
Thank you, David, for the most comprehensive reporting in all of local media regarding the fate of the Oak Lawn branch library. It is heartening to see the support that this community is showing to this anchor institution. If Kroger wants this land so bad, perhaps they would construct a new “flagship” Oak Lawn library to replace the current inadequate building in exchange for expanding their store and parking. This building and this location are not historically significant, but the institution that occupies them is culturally worthy of preservation and expansion.