“It sucks that it’s been closed for two years. The three closest public libraries are in North Corona, Elmhurst and Rego Park.
The Lefrak City library’s extended shutdown comes as the overall Queens system has $160 million in unfunded repair projects, THE CITY reported in June. “We anticipate this negotiation won’t take a very long time because this is a community that desperately needs that facility,” he said. The library has flooded multiple times over the past decade, said New York State Assemblymember Jeffrion Aubry, who represents the district. There is no timeline on when the new branch will be ready to open. But a lease has not yet been signed after months of negotiations. Melbourne Leasing United Partnership also owns the now-shuttered 57th Avenue location, which is about a 10-minute walk from the branch library’s next home. The landlord and Queens library officials plan to relocate the branch half a mile to 95-15 Horace Harding Expressway, off the corner of Junction Boulevard. Initially, library officials tried to salvage and renovate the flooded space, which is leased by the QPL from Melbourne Leasing Limited Partnership, Kern-Jedrychowska said.
Queens library officials parked a so-called “mobile library” outside the shuttered Lefrak branch after Ida, but it operates only on Fridays from 10 a.m. The branch has remained closed for nearly 700 days since remnants of Ida overloaded the building with at least 10 inches of water, according to Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska, a QPL spokesperson. “This kind of killed us,” said Queens Community Board 4 District Manager Christian Cassagnol, adding that there had been calls for expanding library services in the area even before the Lefrak City branch closed. The Lefrak City branch of the Queens Public Library will shift to a new location a few blocks from its 57th Avenue site, which suffered severe flooding damage during the September 2021 storm - then took on even more water from a heavy rainfall in April. The book is closing on a Queens library that has been shelved for nearly two years after being swamped by Hurricane Ida, THE CITY has learned.
0 kommentar(er)
