Bernal Heights Branch Library

Bernal Heights Branch Library is a two-storey concrete-frame building of about 8,063 square feet at 500 Cortland Avenue, built in 1940, serving Bernal Heights and part of the Mission District. Its renovation is documented less as construction than as argument. Library Commission minutes from 2006 record a capital campaign representative praising the planned work while suggesting the branch manager's office be redesigned for other uses, a Bernal Heights resident speaking about the January community meeting on the revised designs, and a commissioner calling for a policy on what constitutes an appropriate use of a public library building — noting that the lack of such a policy had allowed a situation to develop at this branch. The artwork became its own dispute. The Library Commission took up the Bernal Heights Branch Library Artwork Project in 2011 with a view to endorsing it to the Arts Commission; at the Arts Commission's visual arts committee, a member of the public argued that the process leading to the mural project had been "semi-secret", that the committee had been given misleading and incorrect information by the Library Commission, and that it should take no further action — adding that the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force had found the arts commission in violation for failing to record the committee's meetings. No city spending is recorded against the branch by name.