BY ANNE PYBURN CRAIG
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF RICHARD TERMINE
Early on, some doubted it would ever succeed—an ambitious plan to remake Lincoln Center, the world’s largest and foremost cultural institution. Constituents squabbled and squirmed, preservationists grumbled, some opined that $1.2 billion was a mighty fancy price tag.
Others even wondered whether Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc. (LCI) was a viable concept. At times, it seemed unwieldy—one organization serving as impresario and landlord to 11 others, each with its own administration and its own board of directors, collectively presenting thousands of events each year in 22 separate performance venues on the Lincoln Center campus.
Fully realized, the renovation will remake 16 acres of streetscape. The number of trees along Columbus Avenue will go from eight to 89, and the number of honey locusts on 65th Street will be tripled. New Yorkers will have approximately 22,700 square feet of new green space, including a 7,203-square-foot rooftop lawn over a major new restaurant. And, voila—65th Street is being reinvented as a Street of the Arts.
Private fundraising known as the Bravo Lincoln Center campaign has been underway since 2004. Big donors have included Citi Foundation, Morgan Stanley, the Bank of New York Mellon, Credit Suisse, JPMorgan Chase, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and the Walt Disney Company, each of whom gave over $3 million.
“Lincoln Center’s share of the $1.2 billion is $845 million,” explains Real Estate and Construction Council co-chair Peter Malkin, “and we’ve got somewhere over $600 million raised so far, between private, city, state, and federal funds. There are arrangements already in place to finance the entire LCI share, through tax-exempt bonds, for a time, if necessary. The rest is shared among the other constituents, and they do pretty well too. [In 2008, a single donor—oil billionaire David H. Koch—gave $100 million to the New York State Theatre in one stroke.] We are most definitely going ahead.”
“We’re feeling very upbeat,” says LCI President Reynold Levy. “The enthusiasm generated by the Alice Tully Hall renovation will continue and be reflected in the successive unveilings over the next two years. It’s great to see the smiles on so many faces—we’ve been getting a lot of thank-yous. We’ve taken the 21st-century mission seriously—there’s a need to evolve, adapt, and anticipate. It feels terrific to be at a place of helping to propel the city forward even in tough economic times.”
As glass replaces stone in the physical facades, Lincoln Center aims to become equally transparent and welcoming on programmatic levels. “The Harmony Atrium will host free performances and offer discount tickets to anything going on that day, a superb benefit for tourists and locals,” notes Malkin. “Jazz at Lincoln Center brings in a whole new genre and audience, and the New York City Opera is consciously marketing itself to a younger crowd, so we’re reaching past the almost-five-million people a year who already come here.”
The Atrium, between West 62nd and 63rd Streets, has been redesigned by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien. “From the very beginning we conceived of the space as a kind of indoor garden,” says Tsien. “There are 16 occuli—skylighted openings in the ceiling that will give one a sense of connection to the changing times of day. The plant walls will, of course, release some oxygen into the space, but will also provide moisture and a gentle sense of well being. We are using a large felt wall by the artist Claudy Jongstra to absorb sound, created from the wool of sheep that she breeds and colored by natural dyes from plants that she grows. We have reused much of the existing structure, both to contain costs and because it uses less resources.”
“People can sometimes forget what the cultural landscape and perception of the United States was like in the 1950s,” says 50th-anniversary exhibit curator Tom Mellins. “The perception [was] that we placed more emphasis on the commercial sector than on the cultural. The people organizing this were ambitious—they had the president of the United States breaking ground, on the front page of the New York Times. They wanted it to be a grand event on the world stage, to divest themselves of any sense of cultural inferiority.”
A 20-page planning document, written in 1961 and archived in the online library of the National Defense University, sings its own aria of pride and joy. “Because the arts do affect the happiness and well being of our people, their advancement is becoming of greater concern to everyone interested in a better America,” reads the plan. “And so say we all, building toward one world, bringing unity through the international language of the arts.” Eisenhower overturned the first shovelful of earth as John D. Rockefeller III and Robert Moses looked on; Leonard Bernstein conducted the national anthem.
“Lincoln Center demolished block after block to be built, displacing thousands of families and businesses,” Liz Diller, lead architect on the 65th Street renovations, observed to the Boston Globe in 2007. “It was regarded as almost an enemy of the people, an Acropolian structure elevating the arts and freezing the public out. It’s built almost like a fortress with a solid base all the way around it. Most of the periphery is about service, either garage entries or loading docks. We’re turning it inside out, assisting an historic reversal.”
At first, not everyone was ecstatic about the avant-garde glass with which the firm Diller Scofidio+Renfro envisioned replacing the familiar travertine Brutalist facades. “Bad Cosmetic Surgery at Alice Tully Hall,” screeched Carter B. Horsely in the City Review in 2006. Since Brutalist facades were most often done in concrete, the use of travertine (to match the white stone of the other buildings) can be interpreted as a nod to Culture in the first place. Diller herself calls it “Brutalism in drag.”
Mellins would beg to differ. “Some people found the old building difficult to penetrate. It was literally hard to find the front door, it wasn’t particularly comfy or commodious,” he says. “The redesign shows how architecture and places can be preserved and transformed at the same time—like a metaphor for Lincoln Center’s work, continuing the great classical traditions with a new generation of performers while fostering the avant-garde, keep the symphony and opera while adding the jazz. The new building blurs the definitions of in and out, culture and street. Whether you’re at a concert or just passing by and looking up, there’s more light and air.”
The redone Alice Tully Hall opened this February. “The small groups which played that evening were enveloped in a pleasant bloom of reverberation, but their sound was also extremely clear and direct…Traditionally reverberation and clarity required mutually exclusive trade-offs. The actual experience of this is so rare, that it takes a little getting used to, as beautiful as it is,” raved Michael Miller in the Berkshire Review for the Arts. Lincoln Center leadership even managed to negotiate with the Metropolitan Transit Authority; the mighty rumbles and screeches of the subway are muffled as they pass beneath the venue.
Levy, diplomatic to his toes, balks at the suggestion that leading a group of a dozen creative organizations is anything akin to herding cats; instead, he talks as though raising a billion dollars while steering 12 diverse arts organizations off the rocky shoals of disagreement to the safe harbor of acclaim is simply all in a day’s work.
“It was quite a process. It took a lot of listening, a lot of conflict resolution, a lot of trust building,” Levy says of the project he took over in 2002. “The conflicts are ancient history; peace has descended on Lincoln Center. We just tried to find the highest common denominator for all the constituencies, and see what they had in common that we could pursue and how to develop the right set of incentives.”
And so, says Levy, Team LCI produced. “Diller Scofidio+Renfro produced a stunning, magnetic design. LCI developed the literature and public relations kit, dealt with the government and regulatory piece, the community relations. We agreed to pay for the public spaces—the brand new central artery, the 21st-century technology involved. The greening of the campus, the redone Harmony Atrium, the brand new entryways, an inner roadway that will be built below ground—these are all covered by Lincoln Center’s own fundraising. Finally, we said to the constituents, ‘We’ll match 20 percent of the first $25 million you raise and 15 percent of anything above that.’
“After 45 years as a very busy place, a lot needed upgrading—both visible aspects and the more unglamorous things like a new mechanical plant—things we wanted to expand, modernize, and remodel.”
ARUP, Engineering Consultant of the Year at the Buildings Awards 2009, provided structural, ventilation, electrical, plumbing, fire protection, and fire engineering services for most of the project, including renovating the central mechanical plant. Energy efficiency was a stated goal; high efficiency pumps, chillers, cooling towers and fans, a plate and frame heat exchanger, chilled water temperature reset, and reconfigurations that result in self-balancing circuits were some of the measures implemented. As a result, NYSERDA rebates are helping reduce the project’s capital costs.
“We’re loved,” says Levy. “I think that’s why the urban review process went smoothly. It wasn’t because there was any lack of opinions or advocacy. We kept in constant touch, we listened carefully, and we welcomed all views. There’s an underlying respect for our mission and what we’re accomplishing.”
The 2004 economic impact study indicated that as of 2003, taxable property values for the Lincoln Square neighborhood increased 2,608 percent compared to 447 percent for the rest of Manhattan over the past half-century. This month, LCI’s Real Estate and Construction Gala will fete a dozen major developers, including companies like Millenium Partners, who developed Lincoln Square as a “new concept in mixed-use urban living and entertainment,” and the internationally renowned and venerable Gotham Organization—all of whom, Malkin explains, have already completed major development in the Lincoln Center neighborhood, Brutalist facades and all.
“We’re huge believers in the arts as a revitalization tool,” says Steven Pedigo, director of community strategy and research for the Creative Class Group. “Putting capital into, say, a stadium doesn’t bring the same bang for the buck—what’s emerging is, the arts are better. In downtown Philly, here in Oregon, Newcastle in the United Kingdom—huge investments have been made, and what it’s done for the city is pretty amazing.”
The project’s key factor, says Pedigo, “is keeping it affordable and accessible to the public—bringing the art out to the people. It’s the messy neighborhoods that thrive. You can’t just create stunning architecture and hope it’ll breathe life into the area—it has to be mirrored in the programming.”
“One of the things that pleased me the most about the reaction to Alice Tully Hall was that it seemed understood that the themes you can see there will be reflected in the rest of the renovation—transparency, access, greening,” says Levy. “We’ve fused the social discourse with artistic engagement. We’re offering food and beverage at a range of price points, reaching out to new and traditional audiences. We now have a WiFi campus. Everything will be pedestrian-friendly, user-friendly—not walled off from the city but infused with it, and allowing the city to be infused by Lincoln Center in return. The experiences people can have here are as important in a recession as in a time of expansion—in fact, I think in some ways people are even more eager to be transported, perhaps to return with more energy for everyday life. I firmly believe that the values of Lincoln Center—the illumination that art can add to life—stand the test of time and always will.”
“Here will develop a mighty influence for peace and understanding throughout the world,” declared Eisenhower in 1959 as he prepared to turn the first shovel of earth at Lincoln Center’s groundbreaking ceremony.
Not only has Lincoln Center become “a mighty influence” for the arts, but it’s also managing to provide substantial employment opportunities even in the face of a failing economy. Right now LCI, Inc. is running the second largest construction project in Manhattan. In 2004 it was estimated that between 1998 and 2008, construction activity associated with Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall and the 65th Street Redevelopment Project would generate $1.1 billion in economic activity, including a total of 8,500 construction-related jobs—that’s 850 jobs a year for 10 years. The largest project, the rebuilding of the Port Authority-owned World Trade Center site, languishes—the latest reports estimate 37 years until completion—leading one to meditate, perhaps, on the relative inefficiency of a government entity or perhaps on the surpassing passion with which New Yorkers really do cherish the arts.
“For a project this massive to be going forward when so much is in abeyance, financed and inspired by private citizens,” says Malkin, “is a shot in the arm. It shows great foresight—it’ll have tremendous long-term benefit for all New York City.”
Direct operations spending by LCI and its resident organizations was $530 million in 2003, including $350 million on employee wages and benefits. Lincoln Center generated $1.14 billion in sales for firms in the New York City metropolitan region, and created 10,600 jobs with $510 million in earnings for metropolitan region residents that year, the most recent for which an impact study exists.
“The west side of the city was just a terrible decaying blight before Lincoln Center,” says Malkin’s partner-in-planning, Real Estate and Construction Council Co-Chair Lawrence Benenson, who attended Lincoln Center’s opening night in 1966 in his mother’s womb. “Lincoln Center didn’t revitalize the West Side—it made the West Side. In any other major city, any one institution of the caliber of any of Lincoln Center’s constituents would be a huge magnet. But then, that’s what New York’s about.”
