The city. Even more important, this project, this fight about the north beach Branch Library, about joe dimaggio, fundamentally was about whether we were going to be moving forward as a city. Whether we were going to focus just on the past or also on the future of our city. Whether we were going to focus on what recreation was like 25 or 50 years ago or what needs to happen today and in the future in San Francisco . And we won that battle and we sent a clear message that that city has a strong future for everyone and were going to make it happen. Thank you and congratulations. [applause] thank you, scott. Appreciate it. I did mention that the library is thriving . Did i mention that last year we had 7. 2 million visitor to our libraries . Its exciting to know that and its the only larguishan library that did not suffer any reductions or cutbacks during the economic downturn. You provided that Stable Funding and thank you, again for all of your terrific support. With that i would like t
Battle and you all stood with us and were here today to break ground on this great library, big hand for all of those who put that effort in. [ applause ] this project is the 24th library that our agency has been involved in. We have renovated 16 libraries, and we have built 6 new ones. The 23rd is in the bayview in my neighborhood and that will be ready for groundbreaking in january and for completion and opening in january and now were groundbreaking on this project. As part of this project, you will be getting a twostory library. It will be designed for led silver or greater and sustainable and as opposed to the old library it will be ready for the big one, seismically fit. Something mayor lee has put forth in his leadership as mayor is that it will bring a lot of jobs and this library will be the First Library to undergo the new local hiring law, meaning that 25 of san franciscans will be working on this project. Big hand for mayor lee and the board of supervisors for their leaders
As our librarian just said, the very first meeting i took, even before he was swornin, after i was elected was about this library. And i got to tell you, that was only four years of a tenyear struggle. There have been hundreds of meetings coming together. There are High School Students today who were preschool students when we started this conversation. And i have to tell you as we all know, it takes a village to raise our kids, but it has taken many villages to build this library. I want to start first and foremost by thanking three mothers, who helped to lead friends of joe dimaggio, julie christinsen, lizzy diaz and lizziehurst, thank you for all you have done. [ applause ] and i also want to take a moment and thank all of the parents who are here of all the different schools that we have. Yes, franklin middle school, garflied, st. Peter and paul, what am i missing . Sherman, Telegraph Hill. Thank you all for what you are doing. I also want to thank those who have been advocating fo