After nearly a decade of delays, the Richmond Hill Library’s long-promised renovation remains mired in planning and city processes, with library leaders projecting another three years before neighborhood residents see a renewed facility at 118-14 Hillside Ave.
Frustration boiled over at the Jan. 12 Queens Borough Board meeting, where officials from the Queens Public Library faced pointed questions from Community Board 9 Chair Sherry Algredo and other area leaders.
The Borough Board is made up of Borough President Donovan Richards Jr., councilmembers representing Queens and the chairpersons of the area’s community boards.
“I’m supposed to be representing the voices of the community board, and I’m here to tell you that our voices are not being heard,” Algredo told QPL President and CEO Dennis Walcott. “This has been a nine-year project. The community deserves to know what’s happening.”
Community leaders have said the project’s repeated delays deprive the neighborhood of much-needed accessible library space, noting longstanding promises going back to 2016.
For Algredo and others, the lack of “swing space” — a temporary facility during renovations — has become a top concern, with many preferring that over proposed temporary trailers.
“We’re frustrated. We don’t want trailers at this point. We want a swing space. We deserve it,” she said. “If we want to have a safe library space, if or when this ever happens, we need a swing space.”
“We share your frustration,” Walcott said. “We understand that. Trust me.”
He added that he’s been asked about the Richmond Hill Library while at the “YMCA pool.”
Walcott acknowledged the confusion around a swing space, clarifying that “the money comes out of our expense budget, and it takes a long time for us to put in place a swing space, no matter what the location is. Every now and then we’ve been able to do that, but I want to be very clear and have it on the record that it’s not capital money that funds a swing space. It is expense money, and our expense dollars are not that great.”
Library officials confirmed that the renovation is fully funded at $18 million. Initial 2016 projections had a $6 million price tag.
“The project is currently in bid packaging, so we’re beyond the construction documents phase,” said John Katimaris, the library system’s vice president of capital projects management. “We expect to be out of bid packaging by the end of May.”
Katimaris said the project would then move into legal review at the city’s Department of Design and Construction, and that the bid should be awarded sometime in October. After that, the contractor will have to fulfill administrative requirements with the city, followed by a 60-day notice to close the library location for construction.
“I am forecasting substantial completion of construction for Richmond Hill to occur in November of 2029,” Katimaris said, adding that shovels could be in the ground in June 2027.
“Everything from today until June of 2027 is really part of the New York City construction procurement bidding contractor award process,” Katimaris clarified.
Board members extracted a promise for quarterly updates — a commitment that went unfulfilled last year — and closed the discussion with an insistence that the community be kept more closely informed.
“I truly respect the frustration,” Walcott said. “Trust me, I do.”
He added that the meeting had a positive outcome because “it’s finally through the bureaucratic maze and the back and forth that you talked about to a point now of having the steps that John laid out.”
While Richmond Hill’s saga dominates community concern, the schedule for the Woodhaven Library’s $24 million renovation remains similarly uncertain.
Katimaris expressed doubt about the city’s estimated schedule for the Woodhaven renovation, at 85-41 Forest Pkwy.
“I’m looking at dates provided to me by DDC last week, and these dates I’ll present right now, but I want it understood that I am very skeptical these dates will be realized,” he said.
Katimaris said the DDC told him the work on the Woodhaven Library would start in July 2026 and is projected to be completed by July 2028.
“The dates that the DDC provided to me are far too suspect. They do not pass my stress test right now,” he said. “So I do not have dates that I can present with confidence regarding the Woodhaven project.”
A DDC representative later told the Chronicle that construction on Woodhaven Library is expected to begin in 2028, and that he would be in contact with the library about the discrepancy.
At Community Board 9’s meeting the following day, Jan. 13, Seth Wellins, a member of the group’s Education Committee who was also in attendance at the Borough Board meeting, expressed concerns about both the Richmond Hill and Woodhaven libraries potentially being closed for construction at the same time.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen 10 years ago,” Wellins said. “I don’t know the logistics of how they’re going to deal with that.”
On the lack of a swing space, Algredo told the board, “We’re going to work on it because we won’t accept it, so we’re going to work on it with electeds. We’re going to tap into them and some money, and we’re going to get it because a trailer is not accessible.”
Cristal Rivera, the chair of the Education Committee, added, “We’re going to get some things in that library, because the trailer will be unacceptable.”