They Told Me Not to Take that Job: Tumult, Betrayal, Heroics, and the Transformation of Lincoln Center (13 page)

Transformation

                
The in-fighting at Lincoln Center resembles the kind of insidious arguments that sometimes tear families apart. Nearly every aspect of the redevelopment plan—from basic questions of governance and veto power to architectural details and artistic hegemony—seems to be contested. The most powerful constituent of all, the Metropolitan Opera, has taken what seems to be a perpetually adversarial role, even threatening for a time not to participate in the redevelopment. The air at Lincoln Center is as full of bewildering voices and implicit threats as a production of “The Tempest.” Only there is no Prospero in sight.

                
. . . This kind of disagreement makes doing business harder than it needs to be and makes Lincoln Center look less like the commanding cultural institution it is and more like a collection of petty fiefs.

                    
—Editorial,
New York Times
, October 16, 2001

W
hen you arrive at a place that has dug a hole as deep as the
New York Times
suggested, it does not take a mastermind to know that it is past time to stop the digging and start the building.

But how?

In the midst of constituents in disarray and what could fairly be called Lincoln Center’s own midlife crisis, and in the face of strong internal resistance, inescapable major distractions, and forbidding economic conditions, how did we manage to secure forward movement?

The modernization of Lincoln Center’s public spaces, artistic facilities, and infrastructure is a story worth recounting for what it explains about how leaders, trustees, and staff can advance from a situation rightly characterized as dire to one that today draws praise and instills pride.

Allow me to set the scene. The nerve-racking aftermath of 9/11 and the prolonged economic slowdown that followed. The very governance structure of Lincoln Center redevelopment, requiring unanimity, which seemed designed to prevent and delay forward movement rather than facilitate it. The cynicism of the media and other close observers, like foundations, trustees, and potential major donors, who had witnessed so many false starts and were not enamored of the divisiveness and turmoil on campus. The continued active resistance of key players, who sought to prevent what they couldn’t entirely control.

With these and other challenges fully in mind, Bruce Crawford, my partner and Lincoln Center’s chair from 2003 to 2005, joined me in recognizing a fundamental reality. Not every resident artistic organization was ready during the same period of time to plan in earnest for renovation. Many were not even prepared to offer informed opinions about the key steps to take in modernizing the public spaces near their own facilities. Determining which organizations were prepared to join forces and catalyze this stalled and stalemated project seemed like a good place to begin.

So we looked across the campus to find our coalition of the willing. The simplest way to proceed was by the process of elimination.

Beginning in 2003, the New York City Opera, one of two occupants of the New York State Theater, was intent on moving elsewhere. Its artistic director, Paul Kellogg, was convinced that the hall that had served New York City Opera’s artists and audiences for forty years was now acoustically inferior, with too large a seating capacity. It would not work in the twenty-first century. He longed for an auditorium that wasn’t built to Mr. Balanchine’s specifications with only dance in mind,
but to his own, with baroque opera and musical theater as its raison d’être. The founder of the New York City Ballet, and arguably the greatest choreographer of the twentieth century, George Balanchine, set the most important guidelines for how the auditorium in the New York State Theater was to be built. Kellogg chafed at the results. He couldn’t bring himself to live with them comfortably.

Even those who agreed with Paul’s goal, and I was not among them, were confused by his tactics and concerned about his seeming lack of realism. Why publicly tell your audience in 2001 and 2002 that the sound they hear emanating from the stage is inferior? At the very earliest, the New York City Opera could not move out of its New York State Theater quarters until 2008. It appeared to many that while Kellogg had intended to speak to potential donors and government officials about the hall’s acoustic inferiority, his views were also reaching the City Opera’s current audience. If so, wasn’t he running the risk that, over time, many of its members would be persuaded that he was correct and quit paying for the privilege of attending? Beware of Sol Hurok’s admonition: “If the public does not want to buy tickets, you can’t stop them.” Not surprisingly, dramatic declines in attendance followed.

It was no secret that Kellogg’s restlessness was driven by the view that the 9/11 site offered the opportunity for the New York City Opera to develop its architectural plans with the federal and state governments picking up much of the tab for concept design and construction.

In its quest, the New York City Opera dream won the support of music critics like John Rockwell and Anthony Tommasini and curiously garnered a favorable
New York Times
editorial well before other artistic institutions had the chance to express interest.

John Whitehead, the president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, was known to be partial to Kellogg and the New York City Opera. Even so, the outcome, not to mention its terms, was very much in doubt.

At community meetings, a strong predisposition was voiced in favor of film, visual arts, community center, and recreational activities to fill any available Ground Zero space. Opera did not rank high as a preferred art form for the new venue. Besides, it remained unclear whether the New York City Opera, if successful, would be granted its
own facility or would share one, and if so, with what entity and with what sacrifice of Kellogg’s artistic and acoustic objectives. What’s more, audience surveys revealed that a substantial minority of the Opera’s existing attendees would not follow it downtown. New ticket buyers from Brooklyn, New Jersey, and downtown would have to make up the difference.

On top of those obstacles, the New York City Opera board had a reputation for being weak in fund-raising, in both giving and getting. Of Lincoln Center’s twelve constituents, the Opera ranked among the lowest in endowment size. In fact, the only known donor who publicly favored a move, Robert Wilson, was said to be offering as much as $50 million, but only if the New York City Opera found a location on the Upper West Side.

So in 2002 and 2003 the last thing in the world the New York City Opera thought about was redeveloping its portion of the Lincoln Center campus, the New York State Theater.

Subtract one from the desired coalition.

Until the Opera’s future was crystallized, the New York City Ballet, with which it shared the theater, could not draw up its own capital plans. It was in a holding pattern. In any event, Howard Solomon, its chairman, expressed an active lack of interest in the whole redevelopment project, deeming it unrealistic and irrelevant to the future of the New York City Ballet. Period.

Down two.

For almost a year, it seemed as if the New York Philharmonic was serious about either building a new auditorium within the existing structure of Avery Fisher Hall or supporting substantial renovations to the front and back of the house, as well as in the auditorium, to be carried out in segments over time. All of the preliminary design work of Norman Foster and others, all of the travels to other halls around the world, all of the thought given to where the orchestra might play when Avery Fisher Hall was unavailable, were tossed to the winds on June 2, 2003, when the leadership of the New York Philharmonic announced an intention to migrate to Carnegie Hall.

Deduct three.

As for the Metropolitan Opera, it had moved into a new century seriously challenged, operationally and economically. Joe Volpe, its
much-touted general manager, rode the previous decade of the 1990s with record-breaking box office revenue and satisfactory levels of contributed income. Emboldened by those results, he raised prices, often by double digits, year after year, for six years in a row.

In the wake of 9/11 came vastly reduced tourism in general and by Italians, Japanese, and Germans in particular, who during the good times had been responsible for purchasing a large share of single tickets bought by foreign tourists. Serious price resistance followed.

So the seasons 2001–2002 and 2002–2003 witnessed two successive operating deficits in excess of $10 million. In addition, Alberto Vilar, a flamboyant, publicity-seeking, and opera-loving donor, who had pledged well over $20 million to the Met, fell on hard times when the high-tech bubble burst. The Met was obliged to write down from its balance sheet some $16 million of his expected contribution.

As if that weren’t bad enough, Chevron Texaco failed to renew its $7 million annual underwriting of the Met’s radio program, placing in suspended animation the future of a show that had run for over four decades. Joe Volpe and Beverly Sills publicly acknowledged that they could not find a substitute corporate sponsor. Their annual plans to conduct an audience appeal over the radio and by direct mail seemed like a white flag being hoisted. Would the radio program go the way of Met television, which two years before had bitten the dust?

So the Metropolitan Opera had little appetite for facility or public space redevelopment. It had more than a few other problems to resolve. Mr. Volpe’s difficulties were severe in number and kind. He probably viewed complaining about Lincoln Center and redevelopment as a pleasant break from having to grapple with them.

Minus four.

That completed the process of elimination. It might have been ideal if all resident artistic organizations were prepared for redevelopment simultaneously. But we would not let the best be the enemy of the good. Those that were ready comprised a highly motivated group of constituents occupying facilities on 65th Street.

The campus was naturally divided between those able and willing to plan for redevelopment and those not yet equipped or disposed to do so. We called those who were prepared the 65th Street Group. Their
members were eager to raise the money necessary to realize strongly felt needs and aspirations.

As much by default as by design, then, Bruce Crawford and I gladly formalized and blessed the 65th Street Group. It was chaired by Bruce Kovner, a billionaire founder and CEO of the hedge fund Caxton, who also served as chair of the board of The Juilliard School and as a member of the boards of the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera. He was a highly respected figure on Lincoln Center’s campus. The professionals and trustees of The Juilliard School, Lincoln Center Theater, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the School of American Ballet, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and Lincoln Center itself rolled up their sleeves and worked diligently together.

The group was ably staffed by Rebecca Robertson, at that time the executive director of Lincoln Center Redevelopment. She had struggled since 1999 to achieve liftoff for the project, to little avail. Now, fresh reinforcements had arrived, determined to prevail.

Robertson was an able and resourceful partner. Indefatigable, extremely creative, and thoroughly familiar with the processes of architectural selection and concept design, her drive and energy were invaluable to the project. Kovner was methodical, disciplined, and extremely patient with his fellow trustees, many of whom had little background in design and construction. They were learning. Kovner rendered it easy for all to do their homework, with lots of staff support. Robertson and her small team supplied the teaching.

Together, we crafted a set of goals for the redevelopment of Lincoln Center:

       
1.
     
To create a complex of the finest possible performance halls for the classical performing arts

       
2.
     
To provide state-of-the-art performance support facilities that will create optimal conditions for the production and presentation of work in the twenty-first century

       
3.
     
To create a heightened sense of welcome and occasion, much improved orientation, user-friendly accessibility for all visitors, and improved donor and patron amenities for Lincoln Center audiences

       
4.
     
To project both an exciting and welcoming daytime and nighttime image: at night as a place of luminous elegance and great performances, and during the day as a busy and active public and cultural campus where the performing arts are learned, rehearsed, and created