Some of Michelle Benjamin’s earliest memories take place walking along Sacramento’s 33rd Street, from her grandmother’s preschool to the Oak Park Library when she was a child in the early 1980s.
Block by block, Benjamin would sing the A-B-C song with her classmates, taking in the smell of freshly baked bread and pastries from a bakery as they walked past McClatchy Park in the morning.
“I knew we were going to a fun place,” Michelle Benjamin said. “That’s what they called it.”
Those early trips to the Oak Park Library kick-started a lifelong love for reading. Her imagination prospered in the building’s basement, as she devoured any books she could get her hands on – from the “Berenstain Bears” to “Ramona the Brave.”
“My love for reading really flourished,” she said. “When they closed the library, my neighbor across the street and I ended up making a library in her basement full with all my ‘Sweet Valley High’ twin books.”
The Oak Park Library Branch officially closed in 1989. Almost 40 years later, Michelle Benjamin is now the principal of Taylor Street Elementary School in Del Paso Heights. She’s been leading the effort, along with her mother Dorothy Benjamin, to bring some form of a library back to Oak Park for more than a decade.
Michelle Benjamin, now 47, told CapRadio that the neighborhood she grew up in, a traditionally Black neighborhood that has undergone significant gentrification, deserves a free, in-person space for children to learn outside of school.
“ It’s critical and crucial because of the benefits,” Benjamin said. “Just the value and importance of reading … and then the sense of community that comes from having a place like a library, especially a beautiful one.”
Why Did The Library Close?
The city of Sacramento consolidated the Oak Park, Mabel Gillis and Fruitridge Libraries in the late 1980s. According to Sacramento Bee reporting from 1988, the city wanted to concentrate sources and believed people would travel out of their neighborhoods for better quality services.
The Sacramento Bee covered the Oak Park Library’s consolidation in 1988.Courtesy of Sacramento Bee
The city sold the library building — located in the heart of Oak Park on 5th Avenue — to The University of Pacific McGeorge School of Law. The old library is now the law school’s IT Help Desk building, which is not accessible to the public.
To make up for the lack of a library in South Sacramento, the city constructed the Colonial Heights Library on 4799 Stockton Blvd, which is about a 50 minute walk from the old location.
Stockton Boulevard is listed as one of Sacramento’s top streets in the city’s high injury network, which are the streets responsible for the most accidents and fatalities.
Peter Coyl, library director and CEO of the Sacramento Public Libraries, said they are aware of the need this presents.
“We recognize the challenges that face the residents of Oak Park in receiving library services,” Coyl said. “They are served by other libraries, but the distance and the transportation to those libraries is, in many cases, a barrier.”
Underground Books, a longstanding Black bookstore in Oak Park, serves as its current literary hub. Former Mayor Kevin Johnson’s mother, nicknamed Mother Rose, opened the bookstore in 2003.
University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law owns the old library location on the corner of 33rd Street and 5th Avenue.Ruth Finch/CapRadio
Mother Rose passed away last year, but current owner Cassandra Jennings told CapRadio part of the reason she opened her store was the absence of a library.
“She grew up in Oak Park, went to Sac High and raised her family here,” Jennings explained. “To see that there wasn’t a library here was disturbing to her.”
Jennings added that the bookstore puts on a wildly popular monthly reading event for kids ages five to 10, but as a shop they can only do so much.
“We can only serve so many people at one time,” Jennings said. “ Sometimes we just need quiet spaces to do whatever it is we need to be doing, whether it’s studying, reading, work, reflection.”
‘Friends of the Oak Park Library’
Dorothy and Michelle Benjamin first launched their grassroots effort called Friends of the Oak Park Library in 2015. They were concerned about below average test scores at nearby schools such as Bret Harte Elementary.
“With today’s climate, especially in competition with social media, there’s not a lot of hands on books,” Dorothy Benjamin said.
Over the last decade, the mother and daughter have garnered 1,300 signatures in support of bringing a library back. They’ve also pitched ideas to past and present city officials.
The two have been working with Councilmember Caity Maple, who represents Oak Park and has supported the effort since before she took office in 2022.
Maple said the last concrete idea was to open a new library in the former Sacramento Observer Building at 2330 Alhambra Boulevard. But that property was bought by the Sierra Health Foundation and gifted to non-profit Community Against Sexual Harm in 2026.
“Now the search is on,” Maple said. “We do not have another location identified.”
Costs and City Budget Constraints
One major elephant in the room is how much a new library would cost. The city is in a $66.2 million structural deficit and can’t afford to pay for building a new one.
The idea to rehabilitate the Alhambra location would’ve cost around $12 million, according to Maple. Building a new library from the ground up would cost tens of millions of dollars the city doesn’t have.
Maple, who is also the board chair of the Sacramento Public Library, told CapRadio the city will have to get creative to bring a library back to Oak Park.
“Hopefully the right partnership will present itself, and I’m hopeful our budget situation looks like it’s on the up,” Maple said. “If we continue down that path, hopefully we’ll be in a situation in the not so distant future where we might have the resources to be able to invest in something like this.”
Talks of Collaboration with McGeorge School of Law
Dorothy Benjamin said that they met with officials at McGeorge School of Law to see if they could use some parts of the previous building on 5th Street as public library space.
“They’re very open to what we’re trying to do,” Dorothy Benjamin said. “In our meetings with them, they talk about the fact that they think it’s a great idea that their students could participate in tutoring them.”
Three officials with McGeorge contacted for this story did not respond to requests for comment on the idea.
Libraries as the heartbeat of community
Ruth Finch/CapRadio
Despite setbacks, the Benjamins are still fighting to keep the effort going. To them, a library offers the 14,000 or so residents of Oak Park a central hub with access to more than just books.
The city’s library system offers access to computers, equipment rentals ranging from telescopes to video games, and a quiet place to go for those who don’t have one.
“A community without a library is missing a heartbeat,” Dorothy Benjamin said.
For Michelle Benjamin, the library she learned to read in has inspired a life’s work of educating others. She’s currently working towards an educational leadership doctorate at UC Davis.
She told CapRadio they are continuing to gather signatures, hoping to gain momentum sooner rather than later.
“It’s been 10 years. How do we move from conversations about it and the surveys and support that we really appreciate to actually getting something going?” Michelle Benjamin said. “Oak Park reads too.”
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