Petition aims to stop Irvington Library closure

FREMONT — Unless a last ditch effort can keep the doors open, the county-run Irvington Library is slated to close at the end of the month.

Advocates of the library have gathered nearly 1,000 signatures to halt the closure, arguing the branch provides vital services to South Fremont residents. But the county is moving ahead with a plan to shutter the facility on July 31 and move certain services, such as book pickups and 3-D printer space, to the city’s central library. Book lockers for drop-offs and a book mobile, or traveling library truck, will still provide some library services near the Irvington branch officials said.

“All those elementary schools, people who live in the neighborhood, they will have to drive into Fremont to use the library,” said Anitha Shankar, a resident who created the petition. “They should be building more facilities and having more free events for the kids, instead of taking it away.”

Deb Sica, Alameda County’s Acting Librarian, said in an email that the county “determined that the building, a temporary structure owned by the city of Fremont, has reached a point where it can no longer provide a sustainable space for library service.”

The city “intends to evaluate future recreation programming at the site,” she said. The library opened in 1971 and since 1997 has “rarely been open more than one day a week,” according to Sica. It reopened as a “limited Makerspace with a small Tool Lending Library and a reduced book collection” after the coronavirus pandemic, she said.

“Popularity was not a contributing factor. The primary reason for the closure is that the building can no longer sustain library services,” Sica said.

Shankar has argued the branch was popular, saying her two kids have waited in lines for upwards of two hours just to get free tickets to library events such as a bubble show and a bird show in past years. She said a book mobile and book lockers are not enough to satisfy her needs or that of her petitioners.

“They need to have more expanded facilities at least in central Fremont because the number of people, the number of kids is increasing,” Shankar said. “We want the kids to go make friends in the library, meet new people in the library, see our neighbors there.”

The building located at 41825 Greenpark Drive was staffed with three regular employees, who will be relocated to other facilities to help with future library services around South Fremont. Other services formerly available at Irvington, such as the tool collection, makerspace and 3-D printer will be relocated to other libraries. The county will also bolster the available maker-space at the main library, creating the Archimedes Makerspace, Sica said.

There will soon also be two self-service automated book lockers in South Fremont at the Wally Pond Irvington Community Center and the Warm Springs Community Center to “provide modern and convenient ways to pick up and return books,” Sica said.

“We look forward to providing library services to South Fremont in new and exciting ways,” Sica said.

One Library Advisory Commissioner, Felix Lechner, recently resigned over the decision to close the library, telling city council at a public meeting that the commission was never notified of the closure. He told the council that he had “lost the trust of this esteemed body.”

In an interview, Lechner said he is not against the closure, and admits the building is over 50 years old and “something needed to happen.”

“I thought it was unusual that the library commission wasn’t consulted when the library is being closed,” Lechner said. “I don’t think that the city administration was blindsided in the way that I was. I think there were city discussions happening that I wasn’t aware of.”

Councilwoman Teresa Cox, who represents the South Fremont district housing the library, said she was “deeply saddened” to hear of Lechner’s resignation, and has been in close contact with Shankar and the petitioners who wish to stop the library’s closure. Cox’s aunt, Effie Lee Morris, was the first Black president of the Public Library Association.

“I’m not just a councilmember. I have grown up in libraries,” Cox said.

She said she asked the petitioners to send her some ideas of what they’d like to see happen at the Irvington branch after it closes at the end of this month.