Oakland could get a new library branch at site of closed grocery store

By John Ramos

Officials in Oakland’s public library system are recommending that a new branch be built in order to correct a historical wrong, and it’s all thanks to an effort by a small group of neighbors who got tired of taking no for an answer.

Ninety years ago, the area known as the Hoover Durant Neighborhood began changing demographics as African Americans began moving in. And it changed the way the city of Oakland looked at it.

“This area has been targeted since 1936,” said resident Alternier Cook.

It was in that year that an Oakland library official recommended that a branch in the predominantly Black neighborhood be closed with the words, “This is not a reading neighborhood.”  

Even now, reading those words is an insult to the residents.

“Because we’ve always been a people that embraced reading, embraced education,” said Sharon Jones. “This was kept from us. But, yes, it does hurt. It hurts a lot. And to actually see it coming from an official saying that, ‘No, you are a non-reading community?’ That hurts!”

Over the years, there were libraries in the area, but in 1981, the last one closed for good.  But some are still fighting to get it back.  Cook and Jones are just two of the “Friends of the Hoover Durant Public Library.”  For the last 13 years, they have been working to get a branch opened in their neighborhood, often creating their own “street-corner libraries” where donated books are given away to residents. But they insist they want something more permanent.

“We are entitled to have a library this close by,” said Cook. “Particularly with the number of children and the number of schools in the area. It opens the world. You can explore the universe through a library.”

And now, they may have found a home for it. A closed grocery store at the corner of San Pablo Avenue and Myrtle Street has been put up for sale. It would make an ideal location for a library, and that’s not coming from the activists; that’s coming from the city’s own Director of Library Services, Jaime Turbak.

“If we’re able to get authorization to purchase this building, I think the chances of us restoring the library are very good,” she said. “We would still need to find the money to renovate it and turn it from a grocery store into a library, but I think having a place is a huge hurdle being crossed.”

It’s a huge hurdle because securing the $11 million to create the new branch has not been possible without having a site in hand. And that’s why, on Tuesday afternoon, the “Friends” of the library made their appeal to the City Council’s Life Enrichment Committee.  If the committee members recommend the purchase, it would be sent to the full Council for consideration. It’s one more step in a 13-year journey, but at least they can see where home is now. And they didn’t want city officials to forget it.

“We know people like to come into the community and tell us what we need and what we want,” said Cook.  “We want it to be the other way around.  And we’re going to hold your feet to the fire.”

Director Turbak said it will cost the city about $3.5 million to purchase the property and that it’s possible to use Measure U funds, earmarked for library capital projects, for that purpose.