Library entrenched in march to waste PEACE building

The annual Art of Community Exhibit at the Coventry PEACE Building.

On Oct. 8, at a joint meeting of the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Public Library and the cities of Cleveland Heights and University Heights, library leaders revealed their planned future for the Coventry PEACE Building. It involves the smell of mothballs. The library’s director, Nancy Levin, and its trustees say that a boarded-up building is worth more than a lively art center currently populated by local nonprofits.

The meeting, which you can watch at bit.ly/CHUHLibMtgVid, exposed tensions between the library and the nonprofits, with Levin referring to the nonprofits as “those people,” suggesting the library doesn't see the organizations as part of its community.

The meeting was intended to explore solutions for preserving the Coventry PEACE Building.

[According to CH City Council President Tony Cuda, “On Sept. 12, City Council was asked via e-mail, by some Library Board members, if we were ‘willing to bring resources to the table’ and that ‘now is the time to talk to us.’ "]

Instead, at the meeting, the library revealed what it sees as its final decision. Levin claimed the building didn't qualify as a public building, and when CH council members offered [to help find] solutions, the library shifted its stance, saying it wasn't an "arts hub"—despite its long history as an arts hub.

The cities’ representatives mainly disagreed, highlighting the building’s broader community role.

Cleveland Heights and University Heights representatives came to the meeting prepared to explore partnership solutions, including possible financial support and donated staff time, [to] preserve the building. Library representatives were uninterested. Instead, they reinforced their decision to have commissioned a $20,000 feasibility study for a soon-to-be-empty building with little-to-no rent revenue to subsidize building expenses.

On Oct. 8, the library framed the study as an evaluation of the building's [potential] future uses, but at a library meeting on Sept. 9 the study was described as focused solely on demolition costs. One trustee, Annette Iwamoto, describing her own inquiry about “adaptive reuse” of closed schools from the 1970s, came up [almost] empty, [finding only one in use, as a storage] warehouse in Pennsylvania. Apparently, the home of the arts at the former Coventry School didn’t come up in her Google search.

Council members and residents have noted the contrast between the library’s rigid stance and the cities' willingness to negotiate on their constituents’ behalf. The nonprofit tenants and both cities worked in good faith; the cities were exploring potential funding to keep the building as an arts, culture, and education hub. But the library's stance remained unchanged.

This situation raises concerns about the library's lack of public oversight, as its appointed trustees make decisions without accountability to [residents] and their elected representatives. Now, as the nonprofits will either leave voluntarily or face eviction, taxpayers [will be] left covering the costs of an empty facility with its future blocked.

The nonprofits led the grassroots effort to establish the building as an arts, culture, and education center after the CH-UH school board decided to close Coventry School in 2006.

While library leadership kept referring to the Coventry PEACE Building as theirs, it really belongs to the people. Heights Libraries’ district, which includes a portion of South Euclid, currently holds title to the property because of its agreement to obtain it from the school district for $1 for public purpose. The loss of our arts hub will cause irreparable harm to the people in our library’s jurisdiction. The library’s action raises concerns about its inability to collaborate with the people they serve and the people’s elected representatives. The ouster of the nonprofit tenants while it studies the building’s future is a needless waste of the people’s assets.

Marty Gelfand

Marty Gelfand is an attorney from Cleveland Heights and a former South Euclid city councilman.

Read More on Opinion
Volume 17, Issue 11, Posted 4:20 PM, 10.31.2024