Matt Leslie
Thursday evening the Board of Trustees of the Fullerton Public LIbrary voted to close the Hunt Branch, currently open only two days per week, because, the Board was told, the library staff did not feel safe opening and closing the facility. With trustee Marlena Carrillo absent, board members Chris Meyer (Chair), Ryan Cantor, Vince Buck, and Ellen Ballard all voted for the closure. The item did not appear on the agenda for the regularly scheduled meeting, but was instead added as an emergency item. There may be an emergency meeting scheduled some time in the next two weeks regarding the sudden closure.
Reportedly, the library staff felt unsafe around a growing homeless population and at least one menacing dog (presumably not within the adjacent dog park). Both City Manager Joe Felz and Police Chief Dan Hughes attended the meeting. The Board’s members were told that new homeless people were arriving from Anaheim, and that they were not behaving in a way the population there generally has in the past. Officers were reported to have escorted staff to and from the building. It is not clear why OC Animal Control has not been able to take care of the dog.
According to the City of Fullerton’s website, “The Hunt Branch was a gift to the City of Fullerton from the Hunt Foods & Industries Foundation, headed by Norton Simon. It was dedicated on September 12, 1962. The building’s architect was the world famous William L. Pereira. Mr. Pereira also designed the TransAmerica Pyramid in San Francisco, the Geisel Library at UC San Diego, the Disneyland Hotel, and the master plan for the City of Irvine.” (Pereira also designed the original buildings on the UC Irvine campus). It should be understood that the gift of the Hunt Branch was, and is, contingent on its use as a library. The city cannot simply close it, sell it, or change its primary use without the consent of the Foundation that originally gifted it to the people of Fullerton.
Though awkwardly located at the end of a long street adjacent to railroad tracks, the Hunt is within walking distance of an underserved population of apartment dwelling children lacking reliable transportation to the main branch located on Commonwealth Ave. And the library’s bookmobile is indefinitely out of service. The library’s projected budget 2013/2014 fiscal year budget is not expected to include plans for the Hunt to remain open.
In 2011 a public meeting was held to discuss the fate of the Hunt Branch in the face of budget cuts. There was overwhelming support from those in attendance to keep it open. In 2012 an Ad Hoc Committee was formed to “Study Library Services, Assets, and Properties” in an environment of fiscal distress. The committee’s report recommended that the library staff and Board explore ways to share the Hunt Branch with “community stakeholders.” (For a three month period I was a member of the Library Board. I tried unsuccessfully to modify the language of the report to insure that uses for the Hunt would remain related to its function as a library).
The Hunt Branch is located directly adjacent to what used to be the headquarters of ConAgra (formerly Hunt-Wesson Foods), but is now owned by Grace Ministries International, a large Korean-American congregation that built a 180,000 square foot building next to the Pereira designed Hunt-Wesson building five years ago. The city already allows Grace Ministries to use the Hunt Branch parking lot for overflow parking on Sundays, and has had discussions with the church to take over at least some form of management of the property. It is not clear that it would remain a library under these circumstances. And let’s not forget that the city built a dog park around it several years ago.
The combination of funding cuts, talks with a “community partner” about taking over the Hunt, and now an emergency closure, would seem to point to the end of its operation as we know it. One wonders what the facility would become under new management, and how they would deal with the resident homeless population any differently than the city has. Is this the end of the legacy of Norton Simon’s gift to Fullerton?
fullertonrag.com 
This is not the beginning of the end for Hunt . Rather, it is the first step in getting back control of a City facility that has suffered from budget cuts, a hard to find location, a hostile, and unsafe environment, and a need for its role in the community to be redefined, and funded accordingly. The Norton Simon Foundation has released its reverter clause in the gift deed, and the facility is now unfettered by its requirement to solely be a library, which opens up a wide range of services, including a library, and media access center, and whatever the community needs. It is my belief that after the homeless issue at the branch is addressed, and the City’s budget recovers, there will be an opportunity for a renaissance of the facility, and the adjacent park. To that end the Daltons, and Fullerton Heritage will be working to add the branch, and the main building on the Grace Ministries campus to the National Register to protect these significant architectural structures designed by William Pierra, as part of the City’s rich cultural history. This is not the beginning of the end, but rather the start of a new, and much more diverse role for Hunt in the southwest community.
Chris Meyer
Fullerton City Manager, Ret.
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Chris, you need to get the heck out of Fullerton politics all together. You are a waste of space in a City that needs real people who care about saving the city.Not some former city mgr who only sits on boards to make sure his/her presence are not forgotten. As for Marlena Carrillo, well the majority know why she was put on the board. To keep her mouth shut! she is a false sense of reality. Get it?
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If the City is so disinterested in saving this landmark, they should give a preservation group a long, cheap lease to make it a museum.
Has the Fullerton PD relaxed its enforcement of the homeless since the Kelly Thomas scandal? Is the City that out-of-control that a few bums and a mean dog close a library? Or is the City just looking for an excuse to save money?
As good a job as Fullerton has done to preserve its historic architecture, it would be ridiculous for it to turn its back on this significant building.
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Unbelievable that the decision was based on employees feeling uncomfortable going to work. Due to the police not doing their job….. Keeping the city safe, you decide to close the facility! Fullerton is not it once was.
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[…] of the Hunt’s open hours to just two days a week had made its operation as a library untenable. The emergency closure of the Hunt earlier this year initiated the effective abandonment of the facility as a site for providing […]
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[…] of the Hunt’s open hours to just two days a week had made its operation as a library untenable. The emergency closure of the Hunt earlier this year initiated the effective abandonment of the facility as a site for providing […]
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Why doesn’t Fullerton get the cops who took care of Kelly Thomas to manage the homeless population around the library? It’s a shame that modern day civilization is held hostage by the have nots.
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Probably because they fired some of those cops, and the city had to pay millions of dollars in lawsuits as a result of their actions. They did have other cops remove the homeless population, but the library is still closed because the city council refuses to fund it, because who needs educated kids?
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[…] park. How many more people will the library have to hire to keep order or will we have to close it? https://fullertonrag.com/2013/03/29/the-beginning-of-the-end-of-the-hunt/ […]
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