Four neighborhood libraries in the District that were closed for reconstruction more than two years ago will not reopen until at least February 2010, according to budget documents.
Residents of Anacostia, Benning, Tenleytown and Shaw have been without local library branches since December 2004, when the facilities were shuttered for reconstruction. Despite residents’ outcry, Mayor Adrian Fenty’s proposed fiscal 2008 capital budget doesn’t schedule reopening until Feb. 28, 2010.
“The library wants to do everything right,” library spokeswoman Monica Lewis said Monday. “We want to do it so that these communities end up with the absolute best branch libraries. We’re putting everything into this process.”
The D.C. Public Library canceled its deal with Hess Construction in late 2005, opting to start over with a more deliberate planning process.
Final design on the new libraries is slated for November, but construction wouldn’tbe finished until the end of 2009 — roughly 515 days. Mov- in and testing would take another two months.
In the meantime, three of the branch libraries are being replaced by 4,200-square-foot prefabricated interim facilities. The Anacostia Interim Library, for example, arrived by truck in six parts and was assembled atop 40 concrete bases. It offers 20 public computers, wireless Internet access, and new book and multimedia collections.
“That’s why we put so much time into them, so that people can call them home,” Lewis said. “That is not a trailer.”
The interim library is adequate, but its materials and available space are not comparable to a full-sized branch, said LaTesha Hudson, an Anacostia advisory neighborhood commissioner. The Anacostia neighborhood, she said, deserves a library that also serves as a community hub.
“I think it’s unacceptable that my library has been closed for this long and they don’t even have a contingency to get it open,” Hudson told The Examiner on Tuesday. “There is a way to expedite this. The timetable they’re using is just not acceptable.”
The Tenleytown library now operates temporarily out of a Wisconsin Avenue storefront.
