An LGBTQ Cultural Center at Risk: Concern for Oak Lawn Library Persists

Friends of the Oak Lawn Branch Library President Stan Aten moved to Dallas at 27.

As oilfield jobs in Odessa dried up like a depleted well during the 1980s petroleum bust, he moved to Dallas and settled in Oak Lawn in 1983. It was a different area then. Most of the high-rise and condo apartment buildings now lining The Strip were a lot closer to street level, and the library branch at 4100 Cedar Springs Road was housed in a different building.

The library moved into its current building on the same property in 1996 after a rebuild sponsored by Kroger. It opened on Dec. 16 that year. He was there on opening day and said he remembers it as “packed.” But since January, Aten, now 70, has had to think about being there to watch it close for good.

On Jan. 16, The Dallas Morning News reported that four branch libraries — Renner Frankford, Skyline, Arcadia Park and Oak Lawn — would close as the Dallas Public Library System is asked to identify $2.6 million in cuts ahead of the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1. Aten said he was shocked.

“The challenge here in Dallas is they talk up big about the importance of libraries, people know that, but the city doesn’t fund them,” Aten said.

Books and Sewing Machines

The library hosts community events, serves as a meeting place for organizers of The Pride on Cedar Springs Parade and houses one of the largest circulating collections of LGBTQ literature in the U.S. Library staff began sourcing some of the literature in the 1980s, Aten said, and the collection grew over the years with additions from private collections and organizations like the Stonewall Museum in Fort Lauderdale.

He didn’t have access to something like what Oak Lawn has when he was growing up, which is part of what he said makes it so important to save.

“There was one or two books in the library, and they were all psychological manuals and stuff. There was nothing to learn about being gay,” Aten said. “You didn’t talk about it.”

Aten helped found the friends group in 1995, one year before the new location opened. The nonprofit advocates, raises community awareness and fundraises for the library. It has paid for branch needs including books, window upgrades, programming supplies, bulletin boards to advertise programming and fresh coats of paint.

On a weekly basis, the branch offers programs such as computer help sessions, English-language lessons, storytimes and sewing classes. 

“We do some good programs, and it makes a difference in people’s lives. Like with the sewing machines, they have a community closet in the fall, open to anyone,” Aten said. “But it’s especially for the transgender folks, when they come in, they can have clothes altered here for free, because we’ve got the sewing machines for it.”

He’s hopeful that the branch will remain open, he said, especially after council members pushed back on the branch closures at a January committee meeting. In February, Dallas Public Library Director Manya Shorr told the city’s library board that staff are reviewing alternatives to branch closures. Shorr is expected to deliver an update to the council’s Quality of Life, Arts and Culture Committee on Monday.

Council Pushes Back

When adjusted for inflation, funding for the Dallas library system has remained stagnant since 2008, even as new branches open and add operating costs. Along with the $2.6 million in cuts requested ahead of the next fiscal year, staff were asked to identify $1.9 million last year, leading to the closure of the Skillman Southwestern Branch Library.

Led by Shorr, staff’s plan to help make those cuts hinges on creating a regional model centered on replacing some neighborhood branches with flagship libraries, which would be open seven days a week with longer hours and expanded programming. Without the closures, Shorr told council members in January, savings will have to be found elsewhere.

“If we do not move to a regional model and close four libraries, I will have to reduce hours and days for every library in this city, which is what we have done eight times over the last 15 years in response to budget pressures,” Shorr told council members.

She also told council members that “No one, least of all me, wants to close libraries.”

Oak Lawn and other branches were identified for closure using a model based 50% on community need, 30% on usage, and 20% on coverage (i.e., proximity or coverage area). Based on U.S. Census Bureau data, need was calculated using median household income, high school graduation rate and the number of children under five in an area.

The presentation delivered at the meeting did not include detailed, specific information on how much the plan would save, prompting criticism from the committee. Along with concerns over the closures themselves, council members voiced concerns that there had been no prior communication from staff before the meeting.

Council member Adam Bazaldua described the plan as “really, really half-assed.” But he also didn’t place the blame for the cuts and communication on the library director.

“Where my concern is is above your head. I believe you were asked to do a budgetary exercise  … [when] ultimately the decision is purse strings, which falls on this body,” Bazaldua told Shorr. “I think that the city manager failed in not bringing this to us in a timely manner… with this being clearly a policy decision.” 

City staff did not return the Observer’s requests for comment from the library director.

‘We Need To Fight for It”

Council member Paul Ridley offered some of the strongest criticism of the plan at the meeting. He told staff the model for community need failed to consider the subjective value of the Oak Lawn Branch to the LGBTQ community.

In response to Ridley’s objections, Shorr told council members that “I understand that seeing the Oak Lawn Library on the list was upsetting for the community, and it was upsetting inside the library.”

The council member also said many in the densely populated community walk to the library. Walking times were not considered in the model for identifying closures, and public transportation was evaluated only by branch proximity to DART stops, not overall transit time under the plan presented in January.

Ridley, who represents the Oak Lawn area as part of District 14, told the Observer that walking to other branches doesn’t seem feasible.

“Part of the director’s analysis was proximity to other libraries, and the closest one to Oak Lawn is the downtown central library. Well, nobody’s going to walk from Oak Lawn to downtown to go to the library, and that’s just not a replacement. She talked about moving the LGBTQ collection to the central library. Well, that’s not going to work. It needs to be in the community that it serves.”

At the meeting, Shorr said the collection could be housed at another neighborhood branch or the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library. The presentation did not include the downtown library in the regional model. 

Notably, the central library sits adjacent to Dallas City Hall, the future of which is currently being debated as the Dallas Mavericks eye a prospective site for a new arena. City officials recently put out a request for concepts for the “future of City Hall and surrounding property.” The Mavericks are expected to submit a proposal for redeveloping the area in question.

Ridley said he is “optimistic” that staff will bring options forward that will avoid closures, as he doesn’t think “closing four branch libraries is going to fly on the council.” If library funding is not increased, Shorr has said the alternative is to cut hours at branches, which would lead to further staff layoffs. The director told the library board in February that the closure plan would eliminate 32 positions. Without closures, she said that number may double.

“I’m not real anxious to do that,” Ridley said.

Plans to avoid closing a branch have met mixed success during the city’s budgeting process in the last two years. The Skillman Southwestern Branch avoided shutting down in 2024 after being originally slated to close. Last year, it appeared as though the branch might survive another proposed shuttering, but council members eventually approved its closure due to financial constraints.

Ridley called what happened to the branch a “unique situation” that he understood due to its proximity to a newer library, the Vickery Park Branch, one of the regional model’s proposed flagships.

While he’s optimistic that staff will bring forward options to avoid closing the Oak Lawn Branch, Ridley said he wasn’t comfortable calling its future secure, as proposed alternatives will still have to navigate the committee and a full council assessment.

“It is still endangered,” he said. “We need to fight for it.”

Tough Times

Lee Daughery owns one of the major bars on Cedar Springs Road. He’s also a member of the Cedar Springs Merchants Association, which has been vocal in criticizing plans to close the library, which he regards as an essential third space and said is “somewhat of a cultural center for the LGBTQ community.”

He came to Oak Lawn in the early 2000s and said the community is well-versed in navigating adversity, which is part of what makes it unique.

“It’s the diversity of the community, and it’s the resilience of the community,” Daughery said. “From early on, 40, 50 years ago, being a counterculture neighborhood down here, and through all the trials and tribulations, the ’80s AIDS crisis and the political attacks through the ’90s, 2000s and even today, is the resilience of the community to stay together and stand strong and fight back.”

Toward the end of March, the city removed Black Lives Matter and rainbow crosswalks after threats from the state government to withhold funding if the city did not remove “political ideologies” from street markings. One of the former crosswalks sat feet away from the Oak Lawn library and can still be seen on the branch’s DPL webpage.

Across the country, the American Civil Liberties Union is currently tracking over 500 anti-LGBTQ bills filed in state legislatures. The Texas Legislature is not currently in session, so the state total stands at zero. But over the summer, conservative lawmakers passed several bills affecting LGBTQ residents, especially transgender Texans.

It’s in that context, Daugherty said, that a library and its collection become especially important to keep in Oak Lawn.

“I think you’re seeing the groundwork of the erasure of communities,” he said. “This could be the queer communities. It could be the Latino community, Black communities, Asian communities and even Muslim, Arab and Persian diaspora, especially right now. We have to be careful, and we have to preserve the community and the history and make sure that our history and the struggle for liberation isn’t sanitized and definitely isn’t erased.”

Could See a Centennial

The Friends of the Oak Lawn Library will likely wait until September to buy more books for the library. That’s because, Aten said, they’re still waiting for a city budget to be adopted that gives them assurances the library will be around.

“It’s part of my life, part of my regular routine, pick up books, build contributions to this thing,” Aten said. “We just finished raising money for library giving week for this branch. We’ll be around. If, God forbid, this branch closes, we’ll have to do something else, but we’ve got money. We’re just waiting for the city to make up their minds.”

The Oak Lawn branch is one of the oldest continually operating libraries in the Dallas Public Library system, dating back to its start in a local elementary school in 1929.

If the proposals to save the library go forward as he said he hopes for, Aten can start planning for another significant milestone on Cedar Springs.

“I’m hoping that once September’s over with, I can start planning for the 100th year in September 2029. We’ll have to do something big and special,” he said. “We did it for the 80th, and we did it for the 90th.”