Performance Center Must Be 'Scaled Down'
A preliminary sketch of the World Trade Center performing arts center, released in February 2014. Image: Charcoalblue
The long planned for Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center, still years away, will have to be “scaled down.”
According to the Times, David Emil, president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., told a meeting of his board on Thursday, July 23, that the center must be built for under $200 million.
“We are looking forward to seeing whether this can be brought to a successful conclusion,” Emil said, according to the Times.
In order to receive the $99 million promised it by the LMDC, Emil said the center would need to show it has planned a financially viable building and can raise the remaining money, the Times reported.
Maggie Boepple, president of the Performing Arts Center, has long said that original estimates for the center, from $300 million to $700 million, represented “unimaginable” funds to raise, though she has never publicly said what she expects the latest version of the project to cost. The original architect, Frank Gehry, was dropped for an as-yet unnamed designer in an attempt to bring down the cost of the building. The Performing Arts Center is to go up on the site of the temporary PATH station.
“We can do a great building for $200 million—it has to be built,” she said at the meeting, according to the Times. “It will be smaller; there may be things that you might have liked to see, but that’s how it is.”
At a Community Board 1 meeting last December, Lucy Sexton, the center’s associate artistic director, said there would be three theaters—150, 350 and 550 seats—that could be combined in different ways to accommodate audiences of up to 1,000.
As “the most digitally advanced space in the city, in the country and one of the most digitally advanced spaces in the world,” Sexton said, the center would position itself as a showcase for digital media arts and international collaborations.
“You could have a performance happening in New York City and in Seoul and in Rio. It would be one performance happening all at once.”
Whether that programming can take place in a building that comes within budget is yet to be seen.
“The PAC was promised to our community and it is imperative that promise be fulfilled,” State Sen. Daniel Squadron said in statement following the LMDC meeting. “Completion of the PAC cannot be conditional. Working collaboratively to build a worthy Performing Arts Center is a critical promise made to the community by the city and the state.”