Next month marks the fifth anniversary of the stealing—really, it's hard to think of it in any other terms—of the Mason Square Library.
In April 2003, the Springfield Library and Museums Association, the private non-profit that ran the Quadrangle and the library system, sold the Mason Square branch to the Urban League, which was being displaced from a city-owned building across the street. The SLMA made the decision with no public input or notification, despite the fact that city taxpayers funded the library system and just 18 months earlier bankrolled a major renovation to the building. The Urban League got the building for just $700,000 and set aside a small section for a woefully inadequate "branch."
The sale helped spur the city's eventual takeover of the library system from the SLMA. Under Mayor Charlie Ryan, the city also sued the SLMA over the sale and won a $334,000 settlement, to be used for the construction of a new neighborhood library. Last year, a search committee appointed by Ryan investigated potential sites for a new library, eventually settling on what is now Muhammad's Mosque #13. The plan fell apart, though, when mosque leaders decided not to sell the building.
Now the search committee has identified two other sites as finalists: the former Mason Square firehouse and the historic McKnight Mansion, which has most recently been used as a funeral home. The city will conduct architectural studies to make sure the buildings are structurally sound (there are questions, for instance, about whether the mansion could support the weight of library stacks).
Liz Stevens and Kat Wright, members of the Mason Square Library Advisory Committee, say they'd be happy to see either site renovated for a library. Both, Wright notes, have space for things like community meetings and a literacy program that was lost when the old branch was sold, and the neighborhood would be served by having either building renovated. But, Stevens adds, "… nothing would be perfect except a building built as a library (like the old library building)."
For a time there was talk of trying to reclaim that original site. Last fall, City Councilor Tim Rooke and former councilor Mo Jones proposed that the city take back 765 State Street by eminent domain. The idea has met with a cool reception in City Hall, however. Last month, City Solicitor Ed Pikula issued an opinion that described eminent domain as a difficult and costly process.
While the city's taking back the library it lost would have a certain poetic justice, Stevens and Wright agree that they just want to see Mason Square have a full-service library as soon as possible. "[Urban League President] Henry Thomas has too many allies to think that this city would actually make a decision to go forward with eminent domain," Stevens wrote in an email to the Advocate. "We will have to leave his punishment to the Lord, which is as it should be."
Mayor Dom Sarno has said that he believes eminent domain is a time-consuming, contentious process that wouldn't help the neighborhood "heal," as Wright says. "Well, he's right," she says. "But if the effort had been started back in 2003 when the building was sold, or even in 2004, we'd have our library back by now.
"It's a tragedy and a sin that Mr. Thomas is so blind that he cannot see that his personal office space serves only himself; it does not serve the community better than the beautiful library that was once there," she continues. "In my book, he will always remain—in spite of his self-promotion to convince folks otherwise—the man who stole the library from the people. He and the bigwigs at the Museums Association did a horrendous disservice to the people of this community."
That doesn't mean residents aren't ready to celebrate a new library. Wright and Stevens hope Sarno will select a site in time for their committee's planned celebration of National Library Week, in mid-April. "We will have champagne on ice at the celebration," Stevens notes. "Maybe a children's choir ready to sing a few bars of the Hallelujah Chorus."
