Building Boom Hit by Reductions and Delays |
from the March-April 2009 Issue of Arts Management The cultural building boom continues, although in today's gloomy economic climate, a number of major projects have been scaled back or will come to fruition much later than initially planned. An informal member survey in January by the American Association of Museums showed that about one third of the respondents indicated that, because of the economic situation, they would delay, reduce the scope or cancel planned capital projects. However, many ambitious projects started within the past few years, especially those that raised their millions of dollars in a healthier economy, have either opened during the past year or are set to open soon. The period from 2008-2113, in fact, will see billions of dollars spent on new and remodeled arts facilities as well as adjoining plazas, parks and other cultural amenities. Last year many major facilities opened including New York's Museum of Art & Design and Rock and Roll Museum Annex and Washington DC's $450-million Newseum and the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History remodeled at a cost of $85-million. In Spain a $96-million project transformed an 1899 electric power station into the 100,000-square-foot, seven-story-high CaixaForum Madrid, a year after the city unveiled its $208-million expansion of the Museo del Prado. One of the larger projects, Lincoln Center's $1.2-billion renovation of its 16-acre campus, completed its first phase with the reopening of Alice Tully Hall in February after a $160-million facelift that included a new three-story all glass foyer and enhanced interior theater lobby. With the entire campus project scheduled for completion by early 2011, the current 50th anniversary year will see such amenities as a remodeled fountain and plaza. To date Lincoln Center has raised about $800-million of its target goal. In the wake of difficulties, however, some major building plans have been reappraised. The Kennedy Center in Washington, which planned a $650-million redesign of the area surrounding it in 2003, postponed the project in 2005 and now has postponed it indefinitely after Congress failed to commit itself to a portion of the funding. In Los Angeles groundbreaking has been put on hold for the mammoth $3-billion Grand Avenue Project, designed to enhance the area around the Los Angeles Music Center and Walt Disney Concert Hall, with new facilities including a hotel, housing units, restaurants, and retail establishments. The St. Louis Art Museum delayed the start of its $80-million expansion from late last year until late this year while the opening of the Indianapolis Museum of Art's $25-million Virginia B. Fairbanks Art and Nature Park has been pushed from this year to mid- 2010. Overseas, the $700-million renovation of Moscow's Bolshoi Theater, which was to have been completed this year, was put back initially to 2011. In early March, however, reconstruction project head, Nikita Shangin, indicated that 2013 was a more likely date. Current indications are that the project could cost more than $1.5-billion. In London, the $429-million new wing at the Tate Modern in London, scheduled to open in 2012, will probably be delayed because of the economic climate, In Oxford, the Ashmolean Museum, was still £16-million short of the £61-million needed for its new building and refurbishing of its existing site which is scheduled to open in several months. Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie concert hall, planned for 2009 at a cost of about $250-million, could cost even more and will not be ready until 2012. The Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, closed for renovation since 2006 and scheduled to reopen in 2008, has now been pushed back to 2010. Iceland, which has been battered by the economy, stopped construction on the $124-million Icelandic Opera at the end of 2008, but resumed construction in March. The opening, which was to have been this year, has been put back to 2011. A plan to build a new $117-million museum in Vilnius, Lithuania's capital, has been put on hold because of the current financial situation. The project, an ambitious joint venture with the Guggenheim and Russia's State Hermitage Museum, was originally slated for completion in 2013. In Toronto funding for the Bell Lightbox, the $C196-million future home of the Toronto International Film Festival, is nearly $50-million short of its goal, but the project remains on track for completion in 2010 while in Montreal, costs for the MSO Concert Hall, the new home of the Montreal Symphony set for 2011, have grown more than 200% to $C267-million since the project's launch in 2006. New York City groups have seen setbacks in construction plans. The Whitney Museum of American Art, which had hoped to sell four brownstones to help finance a 185,000-square-foot addition in the city's meatpacking district, has been unable to sell the buildings thus far. The New York-Historical Society abandoned its plan to build a $100-million luxury condominium tower with a five story annex last year, in the face of opposition by neighborhood groups. Instead it began a three-year $55-million renovation of its building. The New York Public Library's ambitious building plan suffered a setback when the Orient-Express Hotels, Ltd., backed out of its agreement to purchase the Library's Donnell branch for $59-million and build an 11-story hotel on the site with the library owning and occupying the first floor and basement. The Library, boosted by last year's $100-million gift from Stephen A. Schwarzman, is undertaking a $1-billion transformation. New York's City Center, which had planned a $300-million renovation several years ago, has scaled back its plan, which still is in the design phase. While setbacks and delays have occurred, $100-million plus projects are nearing completion, underway or are about to be started throughout the world including the $338-million Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, set to open later this year. The $413-million Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City whose 284,470 square feet includes two large concert halls and covers 14 acres, will open in 2011. The three-theater, $400-million Orlando Performing Arts Center planned for 2012, however, could face a year or two delay because of a drop in tax revenues. With $150-million in hand, the Barnes Foundation's move to a new facility is on track. An existing structure will be torn down to make way on Benjamin Franklin Parkway for the new Barnes building, with completion set for the end of 2011. In Las Vegas, a major hurdle was cleared this March when the city council gave the go-ahead for the plan to finance the $475-million Smith Center for the Performing Arts which already has won $150-million in funding from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation. The council approved the sale of $105-million in bonds backed by a 2% tax on rented cars and $85-million in bonds, backed by the city's redevelopment revenues. In Washington, DC, the Smithsonian Institutions's National Museum of African American History and Culture, set for a 2015 opening, is estimated to cost anywhere between $300-million to $500-million. Another Washington project, the new $125-million home for the Arena Stage is set to open in 2010. The Tap Legacy Foundation launched an $85-million capital drive -- $85 each from one million tap lovers -- to build a facility devoted exclusively to tap dancing while San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art is planning a new wing, doubling its exhibition space. The south is rising again, architecturally. The new $131-million Miami Art Museum is planning a 2012 opening. There's big doings in Charlotte, NC where the city is using tax revenues to pay capital costs of $158-million for a range of projects designed for completion by 2010 including a new facility for the Mint Museums combining the art and the craft and design museums into one building. Other projects include a new Bechtler Museum and the renovation of the Knight Theater and the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Art and Culture, which will open later this year. The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts will complete its $151-million expansion in 2010 and the North Carolina Museum of Art will open a $72-million museum the same year. Two of St. Petersburg Florida's cultural attractions will have new $35-million facilities in 2010 -- the Salvador Dali Museum and the St. Petersburg Arts Center -- and the city's Mahaffey Theater will have a $20-million renovation. Large projects overseas include the $260-million, 2400-seat Paris Symphony Hall, on track to open in 2012, the $81-million Centre Pompidou-Metz, opening in 2010 and the Louvre's $115-million Arts of Islam gallery, opening in 2010, which was the recipient of a 17-million euro gift from a Saudi Arabian prince. Israel has given the go-ahead to a $250-million Museum of Tolerance and Greece has plans for a $400-million Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center and opera house in Athens, to be designed by Renzo Piano. In London, city approval was granted for Tate Modern 2, an 11-story high pyramid costing more than $300-million, and set for a 2012 opening. The British Museum is planning a £135-million expansion by 2012. Perhaps the largest and most extensive cultural facility development program anywhere in the world is taking shape in the Saadiyat Island Cultural District of Abu Dhabi. Under the direction of the Tourist Development & Investment Company, five new facilities will be built, several in cooperation with major cultural institutions. Set to open in 2012/13 are the 450,000-square-foot Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Museum, the 260,000-square-foot Louvre Abu Dhabi and the 130,000-square-foot Sheikh Zayed National Museum. Between 2018 and 2020 a new five-theater performing arts center and a maritime museum will open. Officials have declined to give cost estimates for the undertaking. In Australia, an ambitious plan to renovate the Sydney Opera House at a cost as high as A$1-billion, including a complete remodeling of the Opera Theater, is temporarily on hold. Although the plan won the support of New South Wales Premier, Nathan Rees, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said he was not in favor of the plan and rejected the use of government funds for the project. Other major projects overseas include several in Germany including a plan by European developer ECE Hamburg to build a 300-million euro complex in an historic quarter of Kiel, anchored by a concert hall and including a retail complex and a five-star hotel. In Manchester a proposal under consideration involves the renovation of the Palace Theatre at a cost of £100-million to turn it into an opera house, and Munich is contemplating turning the Marstall Theater at an estimated cost of 125-million euros into a symphony hall. The three-year renovation of Berlin's Staatsoper Unter, which will cost an estimated $174-million, will begin in 2010. In Barcelona plans are moving ahead for the opening in 2010 of a new museum that will unite three existing museums -- the Museum of Catalan History, the Ethnology Museum and the Archeological Museum of Catalonia. In Madrid, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia will have renovations completed and a new addition ready by 2010. Russia, meanwhile is closing the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow through 2012 as part of a $177-million renovation. In Tapei a 90-million euro performing arts complex to include three theaters is set for 2013. Among this year's openings in the U.S. are the Art Institute of Chicago's new 264,000-square-foot, $283-million Modern Wing set to open on May 16 and the 96,000-square-foot New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe, opening May 24. The $112-million Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco opens in October. Opened earlier this year were: the $250-million University of Southern California's new School of Cinematic Arts; the $42-million expansion of the University of Michigan Museum of Art; Washington, DC's Ford's Theater; the new 30,000 square foot facility of the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History in Albuquerque; and the $23.5-million Hershey Story museum. Overseas, 2009 will see some major facility openings topped by the June debuts of the heralded 100-million euro Acropolis Museum in Athens, with some 4,000 works on display and the new Hermitage Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, ten times its former size. In Munich the Brandhorst Collection, a new museum, opens in May. Recent reopenings include the Neues Museum in Berlin, after a $255-million restoration, London's Victoria & Albert Museum which opened its new Theatre and Performance Galleries and the Queensland Performing Arts Center in Brisbane, Australia, which reopened after four months of renovations.The Iraq Museum in Baghdad, which was looted in 2003, finally reopened in February. In Belgium the new Rene Magritte Museum, featuring several hundred of the artist's works, opens in Brussels in June and the new Municipal Museum in Leuven opens in September. Other upcoming European openings include: the Museum of Impressionism, replacing the Museum of American Art, in Giverny, France; Granada's Museum of the Memory of Andalusia, opening in May; the remodeled Tree Acorn Museum in Luxembourg; the Center for Music & Theater in Graz, Austria, which opened in March; the Oslo Jewish Museum in September; Barcelona's Rock and Roll Museum; and the £61-million Curve Theatre In Leicester, UK, and the £11-million home of the Scottish Ballet in Glascow opening this fall. In New York City a range of projects are underway. The Brooklyn Academy of Music launched a five-year $300-million plan that includes a new theater and new film screening facilities. In Harlem, a long-planned Mart 125 mixed use project, named two local cultural groups as components, the National Jazz Museum and ImageNation. Commitments from developers, however, have not been made as yet. In East Harlem, a planned $700-million, 1.7-million-square-foot project, will include a cultural center, small hotel, apartments and office space. The Second Stage is raising $35-million for the purchase and renovation of Broadway's Helen Hayes Theater while the New Museum, which opened its new $50-million home last year, purchased an adjacent building for $16.6-million, which will be used for additional storage and offices until its ultimate use is determined. The Signature Theatre, which was to have had a new home at the former World Trade Center site, will instead have its new 70,000 square foot, $60-million home at the base of a 58 story apartment tower on the city's Theater Row. The David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center -- formerly named the New York State Theater -- hopes to complete its $80-million renovation by October. The Orchestra of St. Luke's is undertaking a $50-million Fund for the Future capital and endowment campaign for the purchase and maintenance of its new home on Manhattans' West 37th Street, to be known as the DiMenna Center for Classical Music. The facility is believed to be the first-ever major rehearsal center dedicated to the classical music community. While money remains a concern for facility planners, Calcutta's new Kolkata Museum of Modern Art, due to open in 2013, found an unexpected funding source. Artists contributed $830,000 to the project. On a gloomier note, a report from the New York Innovative Theatre Foundation indicated that more than 25% of Off-Off Broadway venues in New York's West Village and midtown have been demolished or repurposed into non-performance spaces. from the March-April 2009 Issue of Arts Management |
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