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Is a Happy Ending in Sight for Supporters of the Mason Square Branch Library?

by Bill Dusty

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It’s been a long and exhausting road for supporters of the Mason Square Branch Library, who for many years have had to suffer the indignity of having residents use a wing of a building owned by the Urban League as their local library outlet.

The indignity? The entire building, located at 765 State Street, used to be the library but was infamously sold to the Urban League by the former Springfield Library & Museums Association in a sweetheart deal that cost the UL a mere $700,000 – this after the city had just forked over $1.2 million to renovate the then-library. Taxpayers were still stuck paying off the half-a-million dollar bond used by the city to help finance the renovation even as the UL took ownership of the building.

In an agonizingly slow process that has been well chronicled by the Valley Advocate’s Maureen Turner, the city spent years looking for a new home for the branch library, until finally, in August of 2009, they settled upon retaking the 765 State Street property by eminent domain.

But that turned out to be just another chapter in an ongoing ordeal for library activists. Months of delays turned expectant optimism into knowing skepticism as Urban League President Henry Thomas waged a successful stalling campaign that has thus far resulted in the city’s first deadline of May 2010 for the Urban League to move out (a span of nine months from the original eminent domain-taking vote by the City Council) being pushed back to a new, more vague target estimate of “beyond June 1,” and then finally to a “by the end of September” estimate for the long-awaited move.

And by “the end of September,” we’re not talking about the last week or so of the month. The latest dates brought up for the move are the 29th or 30th of September. My guess is it will be the 30th, if it happens at all in September. (Yes, I’m one of the “knowing skeptics.”)

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While visiting the 765 State Street address to take the photo seen at the beginning of this post, I ran into Springfield City Councilor John Lysak and his girlfriend, Luz, as the couple were checking out a new little historical monument placed nearby. Lysak was not at all pleased with the progress being made on getting the UL out of the building and the library branch moved in, and he was skeptical, too, about the projected date of the UL’s departure.

The foot-dragging, said Lysak, was “unbelievable,” and he had long ago lost patience with the process.

Meanwhile, in one of her latest articles on the Mason Square Branch Library issue, the Valley Advocate’s Turner quoted the chairman of the Springfield Library Commission, Stephen Cary, from a note she received from him, which read in part: “It is with cautious optimism that I believe the schedule will stay on track. I urge people to have faith in Mr. Thomas’s words and future actions. The Urban League is a provider of solid social services that are needed in Springfield, and they’ve identified a new location for that effort.”

That, in a nutshell, shows how the city and Library Commission have thus far been walking on eggshells in their dealings with UL President Henry Thomas. On the one hand, they want the UL out so that the Mason Square Branch Library can re-open – at least by the fall of this year. On the other hand, they have to kiss his ass to ensure he doesn’t continue stonewalling on the move.

And so the process continues on. Besides waiting for the Urban League to depart the premises, there also needs to be renovation work done to the interior, equipment purchases, and a new roof needs to be put up before the library can officially re-open.

Hopefully, though, by the end of November the residents of Mason Square will have a spiffy new library to call their very own.

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Posted by Bill Dusty on Aug 21st, 2010 and filed under Bill Dusty, Contributors, Feature Stories, Latest Posts, Redevelopment, Springfield. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.