LIBRARY LOITERERS JUST AIN’T WHAT THEY USED TO BE

When the Central Library opened downtown, the new facility was billed as modern (with state-of-the-art computerized catalogs), spacious (eight floors covering 646,733 square feet) and comfortable (more than 150 chairs, including a few cushy, overstuffed leather loungers and additional outdoor seating). It was livable.

Early this spring-just months after the facility’s grand opening-library officials found that the library had, perhaps, become too livable. It seems that all of those cushy, comfortable chairs had become home for a number of Dallas vagrants. Within a short time, several of those chairs had been ruined.

When the library opened, there were 169 chairs, not including the outdoor seating. Twenty-six of those chairs were large, overstuffed leather loungers, each of which cost $1,700. Eighty-two chairs were cloth-covered and cost $783 each. The remaining 61 chairs, also cloth-covered, cost $284 each. (All $125,730 worth of chairs was privately donated to the library.) By February, two of the leather chairs had been slit with knives, one had been covered with petroleum jelly and another had been urinated upon. In response to the misuse, library officials put the remaining leather chairs into storage, along with several of the cloth chairs that had also been damaged.

Gail Tomlinson, director of public information for the library, says that the number of vagrants in the new facility greatly exceeds the number that were in the old library on Commerce Street. She says that since the chairs have been moved into storage, the number of vagrants inhabiting the library has dropped considerably. Now, she says, library officials are ready to put the furniture back. But this time, the library will receive financial help from the city.

The leather chairs must be recovered, and the cloth-covered ones must be cleaned and treated with a soil-resistant substance. All the chairs must be continually maintained.

Tomlinson says two local companies have offered cost estimates of $25 per chair, for a total cost of $3,575.

She says she doesn’t know when the chairs will be returned to their original places in the library.