Residents of Albany Park say they were blindsided by news last spring that their Chicago Public Library branch, on the corner of Foster and Kimball, would soon be closing.
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The project will leave Albany Park without a branch for the duration of the two-year construction period, and will also take down 20 affordable-housing units next door. It’s billed at $15 million.
That’s a big bite for a system so strapped it’s had to fire most of the folks who shelve its books, but in the wonderland of Chicago TIF financing, it’s what happens. Mayor Emanuel’s request for TIF funds for the project last fall—and the City Council’s approval—flew under the radar of regular library users like Pam Kane, a member of the branch’s Friends of the Library organization and a librarian herself. The Friends had no inkling of the plan until it was “a done deal” and the closing was just weeks away, Kane says. No interim library had been arranged; area kids would be left without a valued “safe haven” just as schools shut down for the summer.
The new building’s scheduled to open in summer 2014. In the meantime, Laurino says, Albany Park CPL patrons can register by September 1 to use the library at Northeastern Illinois University. No one under the age of 18 is allowed to check out books, and those under 15 must be accompanied by a parent, but never mind: there will also be programs at North Park College University and the Albany Park Community Center. And the bookmobile will come around.
