The Cecil B. Moore Library reopens just days after an emotional town hall
The North Philly branch has been closed since January. It reopened on Thursday after an emotional town hall with Councilmember Jeffery Young to discuss its future.
After being closed since January, the Cecil B. Moore Library in North Philly reopened Thursday, just two days after an emotional town hall meeting. The branch shut its doors on Jan. 21 because of a defunct HVAC system, and was reopened after the Free Library installed temporary commercial heaters on Wednesday.
And while the reopening was planned before Tuesday’s town hall took place, outraged community members made clear at the meeting what they thought of Councilmember Jeffery Young Jr.’s proposal for the library’s future, fiercely objecting to its demolition.
Young has proposed tearing down the current building at 2320 Cecil B. Moore Ave., and replacing it with a new library that has affordable housing units above it. He stalled plans to renovate the branch that would have begun last fall, even though those repairs were already designed and funded through the city’s Rebuild initiative. At the town hall, community members yelled at Young and heckled him during a presentation, making it clear that they wanted him to go forward with the renovations that had been planned before he came into office in 2024.
» READ MORE: North Philly neighbors shout down Councilmember Young’s plan to replace their library
But after Tuesday’s fiery town hall, community members and staff were ecstatic to just have their library back.
“Oh my gosh, it felt so good. It felt amazing,” said Cierra Freeman, director of the Brewerytown Sharswood Neighborhood Coalition. “I was the first person in … so I was able to see the first people coming back in and they were so happy to be there.”
“People came into the building literally cheering,” said Kate Goodman, a Cecil B. Moore library worker and union member of AFSCME DC Local 2187. “People cried.”
The Cecil B. Moore staff was notified by Free Library officials just hours before the town hall that the branch would be reopening on Thursday with heaters, but was not told what the plan was beyond the immediate fixes, Goodman said. She and the other staff expected Young to announce the news at the town hall but he did not.
The Free Library has “a plan to repair the building’s HVAC system for the longer-term. Those plans are currently under review,” according to spokesperson Mark Graham.
Councilmember Young’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“We take community feedback very seriously. We will continue to work with the Mayor’s Office, the Councilmember’s team, and community to find the best path forward and we are ready to proceed in any case,” Graham said.
Even though the library is back to serving North Philly, members of the Save the Cecil B. Moore Library Coalition plan to continue to fight to renovate the current building and against demolition.
“The heaters are a temporary solution, but as the seasons change, it’s not a permanent fix, it’s a Band-Aid,” Goodman said, explaining that temperatures inside the library can begin to get too hot in the spring without a properly functioning HVAC system.
She said that the library patrons who visited on reopening day were informed and engaged with what’s been happening to determine the library’s future.
“Everybody came in talking about the plan to demolish the library,” she said. “People are very, very opposed. Everybody who came in today is very opposed to demolishing the building and they oppose building housing over it.”
Goodman also said that visitors were making connections between how a development project like the one Young is proposing could lead to further gentrification in the area.
“We know that North Philadelphia is historically disenfranchised and always ripe for development from organizations, entities, businesses, from outside of this neighborhood coming in. And so it’s a different dynamic for community members to be so involved in making things happen for themselves,” Freeman said.
Before the town hall, the coalition surveyed over 400 community members on which plan they preferred for the library, and found that nearly 78% wanted the library to be renovated as soon as possible, with improvements that were designed with Rebuild officials and using the roughly $10 million already raised for the project. Only 2.3% of respondents preferred Young’s plan for demolition to create a mixed-use building consisting of a new library and housing on top. Young’s office conducted its own survey with different language and received very different results.
“The councilman does not have money that’s needed right now … there’s no known source of money that’s needed” for the mixed-use proposal that Young has suggested, which would cost around $20 million, Freeman said.
The Save the Cecil B. Moore coalition began conducting a new community survey after the town hall, created in partnership with Young’s office, concerning options for the library’s future. The group expects to provide survey results in the near future.