They Told Me Not to Take that Job: Tumult, Betrayal, Heroics, and the Transformation of Lincoln Center (18 page)

In fiscal year 2006, Lincoln Center raised $30.5 million to support its operating budget. By fiscal year 2014, it had raised $38.7 million for the same purpose. In other words, even while amassing close to $780 million to pay for construction and to supplement Lincoln Center’s endowment, annual fund-raising grew simultaneously at 4 percent compounded for nine consecutive years.

Some first-time contributors to the capital campaign continued to donate to Lincoln Center for its annual needs when their pledge to the building and endowment initiative was fully paid. Moreover, when I arrived at Lincoln Center in 2002, its endowment stood at $133.7 million. At the end of my last fiscal year in office, it had grown to $236 million. Of this increase in the endowment, $43 million is attributable to funds raised during the campaign. Another $15 million more has also been pledged and is scheduled to be paid in the next few years. And Lincoln Center’s pension needs have been fully funded.

Is it any wonder that by 2014 our solicitors were fatigued and that our donors could be officially declared generous, by any measure: number, amount, source, and purpose?

Peter Martins’s question was, in the end, answered clearly and decisively.

T
HE TRANSFORMATION OF
Lincoln Center took more than money. It took a new way of thinking and of operating.

An extraordinary dimension of Lincoln Center’s physical modernization is how much of it was devoted to investing in public spaces. Close to two-thirds of every dollar Lincoln Center raised was allocated for this purpose. In addition to the comprehensive work on campus infrastructure, there were other, more accessible features of this work. For example, new places to sit were built along 65th Street at Barclays Grove, on the Tisch Illumination Lawn, atop the Lincoln Ristorante, in
the Credit Suisse Bleacher, and on the steps of Tully Plaza. Also included in the public space portion of redevelopment were more green, more shade, and more trees.

Two public spaces deserve special mention because no one demanded their creation and now so many cannot imagine life at Lincoln Center without them. The first is located on the corner of 62nd Street and Columbus Avenue, where immediately outside the stage door entrance to the David H. Koch Theater was a completely barren space. Having worked at AT&T, I am familiar with the uniformly dreary switching centers it owned. The three sides of the Koch Theater not facing Josie Robertson Plaza resemble them. Dark. Windowless. Inert. Now, at least, one large corner of the building is miraculously softened by aspen trees and granite benches lit underneath when darkness falls. The Charles Benenson Grove is fully utilized. What was once an abandoned space is today animated and joyful. If you wish to converse with your favorite New York City Ballet dancer or request an autograph, hang out there during the daytime. You are bound to find your heartthrob on a coffee, yogurt, or cigarette break.

The second space in need of a metamorphosis was not controlled or operated by Lincoln Center. It was a privately owned public space (a POPS for those in the know), one of 530 such sites in the city of New York. Owned by the condominium board at 61 West 62nd Street and adopting the name of the condo itself, it was called the Harmony Atrium. The 7,000 square feet of space spanning from Broadway to Columbus Avenue, east to west, was to be set aside and maintained for public use in exchange for the city allowing the developer to build 25,314 square feet of extra floor area (roughly the equivalent of one hundred apartments).

My assessment of this deal from the point of view of the city of New York is simply stated. It turned out to be a hoax perpetrated on the public. The apartments were built and occupied, but the atrium space had been virtually abandoned. It became a temporary refuge for the homeless. It was dank, desolate, and not code compliant. Poorly lit; devoid of food service, proper seating, and functioning bathrooms; and neither well heated in the winter nor air-conditioned in the summer, it was a place to be avoided, a blight on the neighborhood.

Why the city of New York tolerated such conditions in this space and failed to enforce the public part of the bargain, I do not know. But I was utterly sure that the condition I found this space in was a complete embarrassment to the community and, given its proximity to Lincoln Center, to me. I was also certain that it represented a huge opportunity.

Located across the street from the most prominent performing arts center in the world, the atrium, I felt, could be converted into something very special. A light-filled space for public assembly or for those who wish to read, work, or meet. A pre- and post-theater hangout for ticket holders who wish to order a salad or a sandwich and a glass of wine at very affordable prices. If you desire an office away from home, or a place to meet friends, or an alternative site for staff meetings, a job interview, or a book club discussion, the atrium would be there for you—in all seasons and all times of the day.

So close to Lincoln Center, the atrium could be used for performances, free to the public and on weekends for shows appealing to young children and their families. The constituent companies of Lincoln Center could not only perform, but also hold lecture demonstrations on work that had been or was soon to be performed. At once a civic space and a Lincoln Center Commons, the atrium would be open 365 days a year from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. It could serve both as an amenity for the Upper West Side and as an attraction for visitors from elsewhere in Manhattan and the other four boroughs of the city, or for American and foreign tourists.

The atrium could also be a civic space where nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) like the Community Board or Landmark West, or the BID or our elected officials, could convene meetings. Nestled inside the atrium could be a discount ticket operation that would allow for the purchase of off-price seats for constituent performances. In addition, I hoped that well-trained volunteer docents could respond to questions of newcomers about the basic content of performances and about more mundane matters, like how best to return to one’s hotel by subway, or what restaurant would be most suitable for a family of five on a tight budget.

This inspiration of mine was not widely shared. Staff colleagues and trustees had a difficult time imagining precisely how the space would
be used and occupied and why it was to Lincoln Center’s advantage, or in Lincoln Center’s interest, to invest so much time, effort, and funds in the atrium’s conversion. I remain extremely grateful to the trustees of Lincoln Center for giving me the freedom to take the lead in realizing this vision. It was a splendid vote of confidence, especially when construction budgets were already very tight and fund-raising goals were already very ambitious.

After some deft negotiating and patient maneuvering over the course of more than a year, Lincoln Center legally arranged to assume responsibility for the space from the Harmony Condominium on a ninety-nine-year lease. Doing so required finding construction documents that hadn’t been consulted since the creation of the space. It involved detailed negotiations with the city agency responsible for all POPS, the Department of City Planning, and with Harmony building board members.

We held an architectural competition and selected Tod Williams and Billie Tsien. Their charge was to totally overhaul the space into an indoor plaza that would serve as a lounge, a café, a meeting space, a discount ticket booth, a contemplative place to read and relax, and a performance venue, all at once. It was also to be the site where guided tours of Lincoln Center began. Over forty thousand visitors annually walked through our sixteen-acre campus and peeked into many of its theater spaces, accompanied by experts who could respond to all kinds of questions and satisfy all sorts of curiosity.

Williams and Tsien worked magic. They deployed huge plant walls, creating a delightful indoor urban garden. They made clever use of water elements. The purchase of movable seats and tables and the design of fixed marble benches worked well for the space. They wisely decided to commission enormous felt paintings that hung on the north and south walls, made possible by a gift from Betty and John Levin. These works gave this space a cozy, inviting character, one also conducive to good acoustics.

The Lizzie and Jon Tisch Media Wall was located on the north side of the room, providing up-to-date information on what was being performed throughout the Lincoln Center campus. It was part and parcel of an overall infoscape design driven by the same software that animated the infoblades on 65th Street, the scrolling text across the stairs, and
what we called an infopeel, another information dissemination device in full video tucked behind the bleacher facing Alice Tully Hall and fully accessible to the thousands of passersby each day along Broadway. The media wall, one of the largest such installations in New York City, was also used regularly for film showings and for live television transmissions of events like the Oscars and the Tonys and, of course, fashion shows that were taking place twice a year only yards away in Damrosch Park. And the Barbara and Donald Zucker Box Office made it possible for thousands of people to attend performances of all kinds at heavily discounted prices.

The idea for what this space might become was informed by my service as the executive director of the 92nd Street Y. The atrium was a version of a community center. I was certain that if designed with maximum flexibility in mind, it would be heavily utilized, even in ways that we could not then fully contemplate. And that is exactly what Williams and Tsien delivered: a pliable space, capable of being a breakfast meeting location at 9:00 a.m., a civic organization’s annual board meeting at noon, a reading room and study hall at 4:00 p.m., and a nightclub at 7:00 p.m.

By now, just five years after its opening, 1.75 million people have enjoyed the facility. I am confident that Lincoln Center can take credit for operating the single most popular and lively POPS in the city of New York. What pleases me immensely is that for so many working-class New Yorkers and schoolchildren, the atrium is their first encounter with Lincoln Center. It is their gateway and guide to what goes on throughout our bustling campus. Their exposure to Lincoln Center free of charge in such a delightful space is very gratifying.

To fully realize the design for the atrium and its enormous potential as a public space required raising from private sources over 90 percent of the capital cost of some $25 million. Lincoln Center also absorbed into its regular budget the $3 million annual operating expense of securing, cleaning, insuring, ventilating, programming, and staffing the facility. By city regulation, access to the space is completely free of charge, even for special events. There can be no earned income derived from the public utilizing this space. So offsetting the cost of the atrium year after year took marketing acumen (some very limited outside rental income was permitted), fund-raising hustle, and craftily resorting to the
economics of scope and scale, since the atrium quickly became part and parcel of Lincoln Center’s overall operation.

The facility is named after David Rubenstein in recognition of his extremely generous gift. He decided to associate his good name with what was then not so much an attractive space as an act of the imagination of a determined CEO. The David Rubenstein Atrium is a contemporary example of what sociologist William H. Whyte meant when he wrote these lines:

I end then in praise of small spaces. The multiplier effect is tremendous. It is not just the number of people using them, but the number who pass by and enjoy them vicariously, or the even larger number who feel better about the city center for the knowledge of them. For a city, such places are priceless, whatever the cost. They are built of a set of basics and they are right in front of our noses. If we look.
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Consider this an invitation to follow your nose and happen on by.

I
N ORDER FOR
Lincoln Center’s redevelopment to be formally approved, a vote of the New York City Council was required, following many meetings with our council member, Gail Brewer; borough president Scott Stringer; and Community Board 7. At each step in the process we also needed a green light from the office of the mayor and his key departments. No fewer than fifteen of them were involved.
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Which had jurisdiction over what and when was a continuing source of either confusion or disagreement, even at the level of concurring on basic concept designs for redevelopment. When it came to drawings, bidding on contractors and subcontractors, and when construction would begin, no chain drugstore carried enough Extra-Strength Tylenol to see Lincoln Center staff through these tedious, excessive, and overlapping jurisdictions, all with their attendant delays.

To some extent, the price of building in New York City is making one’s way through a regulatory gauntlet. Since for more than a few years Lincoln Center redevelopment was the largest construction project not only in our town, but in the country (when it wasn’t second to the activity at the Ground Zero site), and since ours was so visible and newsworthy, normal oversight was ratcheted up, or so it seemed.

Beyond the formal players, there were those who influenced them. They enjoyed a voice—this being the Upper West Side, perhaps entitlement to a megaphone would be more accurate—but not a vote. They also could impede forward movement by appealing to state or federal departments or by reverting to litigation. Each in its own way—the Museum of Art and Design, the New York Public Library, New York University, the Museum of Modern Art, and Columbia University—would experience delays, constraints, and conditions in its own major building projects as a result of advocacy group activity.

In Lincoln Center’s case, among the key nongovernmental players with which we regularly dealt were the BID, the Municipal Arts Society, Docomomo International, and Landmark West. The latter was by far the most knowledgeable, vocal, passionate, and determined. My approach to this and to any other interested party, like cooperative apartment boards, condominium associations, restaurateurs, and retailers in the neighborhood, was to keep an open door, to treat all views and concerns respectfully, and most of all, to listen. And by listen I mean with a readiness to change my mind or alter Lincoln Center’s plans in response to solid studies, sound ideas, and well-articulated expressions of concern.