City Hall Protestors Rally Against Sale of Libraries

John C. Liu, the city comptroller and a Democratic candidate for mayor, on Thursday spoke out against selling public libraries into private hands.

“Our city libraries are civic treasures, and they should be treated as such,” Mr. Liu said in a statement released after his appearance at a rally on the steps of City Hall. ”Selling our libraries to private corporations trades a small, short-term gain for a big, permanent loss.”

Some critics have raised concerns about the proposed sale of the Brooklyn Heights Library, saying it resembles the closing of the Donnell Library in 2008. Others are upset about a $300 million plan by the New York Public Library to sell off the Mid-Manhattan branch as well as the Science, Industry and Business Library as part of an effort to finance the renovation and reconfiguration of the library’s main branch on Fifth Avenue.

The protest was organized by Citizens Defending Libraries, an advocacy organization, along with the Committee to Save the New York Public Library, which opposes the library’s $350 million renovation plan.

In an interview, a founder of the Citizens group, Michael D. D. White, said: “We are opposing the sale of libraries, the shrinking of the library system and the deliberate underfunding of the libraries as an excuse to push real estate deals out to developers.”

In response, the New York Public Library said in a statement: “Our responsibility is to continue the NYPL’s tradition of providing the best services and programs throughout our wide network of libraries, and to ensure that our library system is financially sustainable, which we are accomplishing by investing in our branches and renovating the 42nd street library to provide even more public access to this treasured building.”

In Brooklyn, the library on Cadman Plaza, along with another library near the Barclays Center, would be sold to developers, torn down and then rebuilt at no public expense on the ground floor of a new apartment tower.

“We would deliver two of these libraries for essentially no cost to the library system,” said Joshua Nachowitz, the Brooklyn Public Library’s vice president for government and community relations told The New York Times last month. “It’s a win-win.”