The CADL situation: ‘No substitute for the Clarence H. Rosa Library’

(The writer is the director of the Arts Living-Learning Community at Michigan State University. He lives in Lansing.)

Capital Area District Libraries’ leadership is considering moving its downtown branch out of the Clarence H. Rosa Library and into a different space within the surrounding blocks. Director Jenny Marr explained to me in an email that CADL leadership has been working toward this move for several years. “I’m coming in at the end of this process and have been tasked with getting this project over the finish line,” she said. In her view, the project is a sound one. She said she would like to save money on maintenance costs and “spend our budget on books, programs, and retaining our excellent staff.”

This may sound practical, but it overlooks important aspects of the vital and complex role libraries play in the maintenance of a diverse American city like Lansing. I have worked in libraries as a library assistant, researcher and teacher, and I have often heard it said that libraries are not just buildings: They are books, programs and staff. True. But they are also buildings, brick-and-mortar spaces of assembly activated by patrons who move through them.

The downtown building is one of very few secular, alcohol-free and publicly funded and accessible spaces of assembly in the city of Lansing. It is the only space of its kind anywhere in the region. The Foster, Holt, South Lansing and Okemos branches, each of which I have visited, are all housed in lovely spaces with lots of books, excellent staff and great programming. But the Rosa building was designed as a unique central hub for Lansing’s public library system, a highly variegated building supporting the varied needs of an American city. 

This building, at 401 S. Capitol Ave., could not serve its purpose anywhere else. Just one block away from the CATA central bus station, it is readily accessible from anywhere in the CATA system. As a former CADL employee working at the Foster and South Lansing branches, I frequently pointed patrons downtown for opportunities that were not available anywhere else in the CADL system. Without the Rosa building, there will be nowhere else to turn for those opportunities.

Admittedly, this precious resource has been underutilized in recent years, as have many spaces of assembly across the United States. Lansing residents have suffered as a result. But we are already organizing to reclaim and revitalize our public spaces. As a community organizer, I work with numerous community partners to help activate spaces throughout Lansing, including the Allen Neighborhood Center, the Fledge, the Ingham County Youth Center, the Turner-Dodge House, and the South Lansing Unitarian-Universalist Church.

Lansing residents are more than equipped to create our own programming. But we need varied, centrally located public spaces for that programming. My outstanding community partners all enjoy excellent spaces. But none of them offer or would ever claim to offer any sort of substitute for a city’s central library. The Rosa building is fundamental.