At last some in the arts community have started asking a question we’ve been posing for years: Does New York really need a high-priced performing-arts center at Ground Zero?
“I have strong reservations about where the resources are to pay for it,” Brooklyn Academy of Music President Karen Brooks Hopkins told The New York Times. Brooks went on to add that “all the existing [arts] institutions are struggling to meet their goals in a very tough environment.”
In plain English, she means New York can’t afford it.
Surely affordability is a question that should have been asked and answered a long time ago. Before the famed architect Frank Gehry was enlisted to come up with a design. Before the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. allocated millions for construction. Before LMDC approved $1 million to hire staff or consultants, as it did last month. And so on.
But this boondoggle has a logic of its own. Over the years, key assumptions have changed, to the point where we now have a center in search of a calling. That’s especially unnecessary in New York, a place that probably has more performance venues than almost any other city in the world.
The center began life as part of then-Gov. George Pataki’s redevelopment plan for Lower Manhattan. Four cultural organizations were selected to anchor the project: the International Freedom Center, the Drawing Center, the Signature Theater and the Joyce Theatre.
Of these only the Joyce remains.
Even here plans continue to change. Because the Joyce cannot fill the venue every week, it’s not going to be quite the anchor tenant that was expected; the center will have to be open to other programs. We expect this will not be the last adjustment.
Meanwhile there’s still the sticky issue of the price tag. Estimates range between $450 million and $700 million, and in an effort to control costs, the original plans have been dramatically scaled back. Even so, the center’s board complains that it cannot begin raising money because it still has no idea what the center will cost.
We have a suggestion: Why not do everyone a favor and scrap the whole thing?
From the start, this was an indulgence based on the idea that unlimited dollars would magically continue to flow to Ground Zero. More than a decade later, we can see how well that’s working out.
We say it’s time for some common sense: Pull the plug.