WASHPO | Power brokers on both sides of dispute over naming D.C. library
Go
HERE for the full article by Mike DeBonis.
Excerpt:
In 2009, Bellevue resident Dionne Brown went searching for help. The city was hoping to replace the aging Washington Highlands Library, a homely red-brick structure set into a hill off South Capitol Street. It showed every bit of its five decades, and Brown and others active in a library volunteer group were looking to rally support for a new building.
Brown approached William O. Lockridge, a Democratic member of the State Board of Education and a Ward 8 power broker. She asked for his help.
“He said no,” Brown recalls, and he argued that the library could be renovated for a lower price, with the savings going to fund social service programs.
That’s not an uncommon sentiment in Ward 8, the city’s poorest, where plans for public amenities can become ensnared in neighborhood squabbles and deep-seated resentments. But Brown & Co. succeeded in persuading the D.C. Public Library to construct a new building on Atlantic Street SW. The $15 million 22,000-square-foot building — designed by David Adjaye, a bona fide global “starchitect” — is scheduled to open early next year.
But the politics have persisted — accelerated, in fact, after Lockridge died of a stroke in January and his widow sought to have the library named after him.
Excerpt:
In 2009, Bellevue resident Dionne Brown went searching for help. The city was hoping to replace the aging Washington Highlands Library, a homely red-brick structure set into a hill off South Capitol Street. It showed every bit of its five decades, and Brown and others active in a library volunteer group were looking to rally support for a new building.
Brown approached William O. Lockridge, a Democratic member of the State Board of Education and a Ward 8 power broker. She asked for his help.
“He said no,” Brown recalls, and he argued that the library could be renovated for a lower price, with the savings going to fund social service programs.
That’s not an uncommon sentiment in Ward 8, the city’s poorest, where plans for public amenities can become ensnared in neighborhood squabbles and deep-seated resentments. But Brown & Co. succeeded in persuading the D.C. Public Library to construct a new building on Atlantic Street SW. The $15 million 22,000-square-foot building — designed by David Adjaye, a bona fide global “starchitect” — is scheduled to open early next year.
But the politics have persisted — accelerated, in fact, after Lockridge died of a stroke in January and his widow sought to have the library named after him.
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