Monday, April 19, 2010

Whitney Young Library- Let's move on and get a building up!

The debate about the Whitney Young library seems to continue for no reason except that some individuals in this community have bruised egos.

The Chicago Public library commissioner Mary Dempsey has reiterated her position that the Whitney Young Library will be a single story building with a two story facade that will be the same square footage as the two story building. She has stated that based on the current economy that she does not have the resources to staff a two floor building. She has pointed to the Beverly, Mount Greenwood, and West Pullman branches are all built on this model and are functioning well for those communities.

It was reported on the CAPCC blog(unverified) that members of CAPCC are still insisting that the CPL build a two story building only because the Humbolt Park branch is two story and their ad hoc committee decided that the Whitney Young branch should be based on that model.
The problem with the CAPCC thought process is that first its selfish and unsubstantiated by any meaningful and documented facts. The facts are as follows:

There is no substantiated facts that circulation has increased to justify a two story facility
The CPL did not commission CAPCC to solicit community response
The Chatham community has six library facilities within a 5 mile radius to frequent

Auburn Park - 76Th Racine
Avalon Park - 81st Stony Island
Woodson Regional - 95th Halsted
Grand Crossing- 73rd South Chicago (Fall 2010)
Kennedy King College- 64th halsted (no book checkout)
Chicago State University - 95th King (no book checkout)

These are the facts as well as several former CPL employees who are also Chatham residents have voiced their disapproval because of the incompetence of the current staff and safety issues.

Based on the above, CAPCC needs to get out of the way and let the library process go forward so we can get a building sooner than later. I think we need to focus on a more immediate problem and figure out why with the number of libraries that serve our community why do we have failing elementary and high schools.

What do you think?

5 comments:

  1. i will post my repsonse tomorrow, as a comment won't be enought to address you post, which i think was way too negative to be productive.

    you weren't at the meeting, and you sure haven't asked anybody in my area what we think about it (certainly not me). i'll post my thoughts on the two story idea tomorrow

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  2. There was nothing negative about it. The facts speak for themselves. Unless you have some facts that say different i don't see what you are up in arms about.

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  3. i am up in arms about your negativity, which stems from whatever bitterness you've had since leaving CAPCC. It reaks of the negativity that has made north side blogs the exclusive forum for only ONE part of the community, alienating others with different opinions. I DO NOT want to see that here.

    There were 25 people at the meeting, including many Chatham residents. It was an appropriate venue to bring up the issue.

    Again, i'll give my perspective on it tomorrow.

    We'll let the readers (outside of the same 4-5 commenters) share their opinions.

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  4. Well, first I didn't know that this was your blog. I care less what happened on the Northside. If you took time to read what I wrote that was a small part of the post. The major part of the post is fact whether you like it or not. Had you done some historical due dillegence you would see the fact.

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  5. In future, I would prefer that you two take any disagreements you may have out of the comments section. Thank you!

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