Annual Book Sale May Be Moved

To Smaller Quarters

By John Voket

Last Monday, organizers of the Friends of the Library book sale were facing the possibility of pulling the plug on their beloved fundraiser. But now the annual Labor Day gathering of collectors and bibliophiles may be pulling up stakes and moving to a neighboring location.

After securing permission to allow Friends volunteers to store gathered books in a state-owned building across from the main campus, State Representative Julia Wasserman told The Bee Wednesday that state military officials had extended permission for the book sale to be held in the adjacent, albeit smaller, facility.

“It’s official,” said Rep Wasserman from her Hartford office. “The book sale can go on in the storage facility off Trades Lane.”

The news was received happily by book sale co-chair Joanne Zang.

“It’s only about an eighth of the space of Bridgeport Hall, but we’ll take it,” she said. “It’s better than facing the prospect of going for an entire year without a book sale.”

Ms Zang said earlier in the week that her organizing committee was just coming to grips with the idea that the sale would have to be moved to a site far from the Fairfield Hills campus, or scrapped altogether for the year.

But following the 2004 book sale, co-chairman Peter Stern said the open access to Bridgeport Hall would be critical because book storage and sorting goes on all year. In fact, the site on Trades Lane has been available to the group for some book storage, while more sensitive volumes are being trucked to a climate and temperature controlled commercial storage facility in Brookfield.

Both he and Ms Zang indicated that if the event is to happen in 2005, an appropriate site would have to be accessible for at least four weeks prior to the sale, during the week preceding Labor Day for the activity, and then for one to two weeks following to break down and remove remaining books.

“This sale is so important to the town in so many ways, it would be a shame to lose it now,” Mr Stern said. “I’m afraid that if we lost the momentum, by not having the sale this year, that we might not be able to get the energy rolling again.”

Proceeds generated by the book sale are slated for equipment, book acquisitions, and programming at the C.H. Booth Library. The 2004 sale, the groups 29th, grossed more than $113,000, and according to Ms Zang it was the Friends’ most successful.

While no one involved with the Friends of the Library group was willing to let the book sale end, even temporarily, it appeared that prospects for a full-scale 2005 event were all but ruled out before Rep Wasserman’s announcement.

Town officials including First Selectman Herb Rosenthal and members of the ad hoc Fairfield Hills Management Committee had said that hazardous pesticide remediation at, and/or demolition activities in the area of, Bridgeport Hall would prevent pedestrians from accessing that entire area of the campus.

An engineer’s report on the structural integrity of the former hospital dining hall, where the book sale has been held for years, further supported the argument against holding the sale at Bridgeport Hall this year.

According to Mr Rosenthal, it was a member of the Friends group who first drew attention to the possibility that Bridgeport Hall’s main dining room floor was settling. In a memo from Richard Marnicki, a structural engineer who has worked with the town on several other projects, he notes a pattern of settling around the perimeter of the hall, as well as what he described as “accelerated” settling where invasive water may have pooled on the concrete slab floor.

Mr Marnicki recommended that areas above underground steam tunnels, virtually the entire perimeter of the hall, not be weighted with any storage loads. He also noted that another large area of the first floor above a basement kitchen area should not bear any storage loads either.

Both of these areas had formerly contained shelves and cases of books that had been trucked in for storage, sometimes for several months prior to each annual book sale.

Mr Marnicki further stated that cracks, which developed during settling, should be repaired to eliminate the potential for trip and falls. There is also an unknown factor of the structural integrity of the steam tunnels, which support the perimeter, because those tunnels were inaccessible at the time of the engineer’s visit.

According to Mr Rosenthal, these observations lent credence to the idea that Bridgeport Hall would neither be able to safely serve as a storage site for incoming books while they were organized for sale, nor support the books and the legions of loyal patrons who come to the multiday event.

“From reading the report, it appears holding the sale there would be a problem,” Mr Rosenthal said. “There would not only be a problem storing any books there, but then once the sale was on you’d be looking at the safety issues of combining the weight of those books along with all the people.”

But despite structural concerns and the pending remediation at Bridgeport Hall, Mr Rosenthal continued to work in support of the Friends initiative. In early November, he was approached to provide a letter of request to allow the group to store books at the state military facility, which is partially occupied by the Governor’s Horse Guard.

In a flurry of correspondence, Mr Rosenthal exchanged memos with state military department representative Joe Balesano and Major General William Cugno, the state military’s adjutant. The final memo of agreement was signed December 15.

“I wanted to do what ever the town could do,” Mr Rosenthal said. “There was little more than an outside possibility that the Friends could access Bridgeport Hall in time to organize for their sale. It is a difficult decision to say no however, because I understand how important this sale is to our library.”

Mr Rosenthal said it is likely the town will retain Bridgeport Hall for future use, despite the likelihood of having to spend several million dollars to bring it up to code.

“Bridgeport Hall certainly has a lot of flexibility for reuse,” he said. “I’m hoping it will eventually serve for future book sales, as well as school activities, and even conferences. It has potential for both ongoing public and private uses.”