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
When 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
5. To develop the public space in a way that enlivens the image of Lincoln Center, encourages public use, and integrates the complex into its surroundings
6. To maximize efficiency and minimize costs for all constituents
My immediate preoccupation was less with the aesthetics and functionality of redevelopment than with creating an incentive structure that would activate the constituents. Sustained cooperation in this massive undertaking did not come naturally to the inexperienced, the ill-prepared, or the shortsighted. The focus of all on self-interest required Lincoln Center to create a set of attractive inducements for participation and engagement.
In formulating a workable scheme, I paid attention first and foremost to how our plans might appeal to private donors and to the state and federal governments. In the last days of the administration of Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the City of New York committed up to $240 million of capital funds to the physical redevelopment of Lincoln Center. It happened on Gordon Davis’s watch. This was an important and often unacknowledged accomplishment.
It was surreal that some resident organizations like the New York City Opera and the New York City Ballet appeared to believe that these city funds were intended to be spent on virtually any capital request they articulated. The fact was that the city’s capital appropriation had to be matched by noncity governmental and private dollars. Approved projects also had to satisfy specific and exacting eligibility criteria. These realities seemed to escape the attention of many of my colleagues and of the trustees to whom they reported.
With indispensable early funding from the city secured, it was imperative that funds be raised from individuals, foundations, and corporations and from the state and federal governments in unprecedented sums. Lincoln Center and its constituents needed contributed income in orders of magnitude higher than had ever been raised before. Indeed, few at Lincoln Center had the slightest idea how the $1 billion or more needed to finance redevelopment expenses could possibly be found. Many believed it would never happen.
Of course, the post-9/11 economic recession was not the most favorable environment in which to begin. But was that temporary financial condition a reason to delay, or merely another pretext? After all, the endowments of the constituents hardly grew and balance sheets hardly strengthened during the decade of the 1990s, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average tripled.
Having recognized that not all resident artistic organizations were ready to tackle a redevelopment project at the same time, we formulated our plans accordingly and announced a collective goal in the $400 million range.
By 2004 Jazz at Lincoln Center had raised on its own some $140 million in pledges to move into its resplendent new Rafael Vinoly–designed venues: Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, The Allen Room, and the Rose Theater, all on 59th Street and Columbus Circle, at the Time Warner Center, only four blocks away from Lincoln Center’s traditional sixteen-acre campus. The location of Jazz was affectionately referred to as Lincoln Center South. This successful effort on the part of a fledgling organization in existence for less than two decades was nothing short of remarkable. A cadre of dedicated trustees, staff, and other true believers made it all happen. Their collective accomplishment provided some evidence that a much broader and more ambitious campaign could also succeed.
SO WE BEGAN with those who were ready. As the campus landlord and the largest presenter of art in the world, Lincoln Center now also became the clear, bold, no-nonsense leader of public space modernization, infrastructure repair and replacement, and artistic facility renovation and creation. Except for The Juilliard School, this group—The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the School of American Ballet, the Chamber Music Society, Lincoln Center Theater, and Lincoln Center, the parent body—was regarded by the larger constituents as composed of organizational lightweights. We were called unrealistic and were thought to be unable to realize a capital campaign. The group was often referred to derisively as the “Northern Alliance.”
The glue that held together these organizations was their eagerness for a street-level identity and ease of patron access on a campus and in facilities worthy of the artists, audiences, and students of the twenty-first century. That yearning was strong enough to overcome their stark artistic, managerial, educational, and economic differences.
This is the deal that Lincoln Center offered to these institutions.
First, we selected Diller + Scofidio (Renfro was added as a partner later) as our design architect. The choice of this firm, which at the time of Lincoln Center’s decision had not yet been the lead architect on a single completed building, was a major surprise. Norman Foster, Richard Meier, or Cooper Robertson in collaboration with Frank Gehry—competitors all: any of these would have been a more logical and certainly safer choice.
We were betting on the creative, nonstop flow of ideas that emerged from the studio of Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio. We appreciated very much Liz’s explicit admiration of Lincoln Center and her desire to mix change with continuity. The firm respected what the founders had built, but Diller and Scofidio were convinced that Lincoln Center deserved to come off its pedestal, lower its barriers to entry, and embrace urban life in the form of an inviting pedestrian landscape. For Diller + Scofidio, Lincoln Center wasn’t just a prestigious client; it was a place to inhabit, a series of intellectual and institutional challenges to be seized, and a set of players to be engaged in all of their variety, with all of their seemingly incongruous notions. Sooner than anyone thought possible, the selection of Diller + Scofidio became a unanimous choice. Even Volpe agreed.
Second, Lincoln Center committed to constituents that it would raise all the funds required for every improvement to public spaces: the removal of a huge plaza, the size of several football fields, suspended above much of 65th Street, allowing light to replace darkness at ground level; new outdoor green spaces and expansive seating in a totally Wi-Fi’d environment; ease of access for the physically handicapped; waterproofing and paving of badly deteriorated plaza stone; and a new information landscape consisting of twenty-first-century appliances that through beautifully designed video blades and three-sheet cases would offer information about current and coming attractions. Up-to-date news would also appear in scrolling and dissolving text on a grand stairway facing the main campus, Josie Robertson Plaza, and an enlarged 65th Street stairway leading to that destination.
Travertine building facades would be replaced with glass. Transparency would allow for real institutional identity, which would be readily apparent to the passing pedestrian or to auto and taxi passengers. What had been a long stretch of garage entrances and exits, loading docks, and service corridors would become an inviting, foot-traffic-friendly street of the arts. And fully renovated, well-lit underground passageways would attract each day thousands of commuters and students walking to and from the subway and ticketholders bound for one or another venue.
Third, these public space improvements would also include state-of-the-art security measures to respond to post-9/11 concerns about terrorism and would embrace the construction of a new central mechanical plant to provide heat and air conditioning at a unit-cost reduction of 20 percent to virtually all of the theaters on the main campus. The charge for these changes and for much-improved access for the physically handicapped? None. Lincoln Center would raise every needed penny here, too.
Lincoln Center also agreed to pay for all insurance costs associated with construction. It offered to handle all federal and state regulatory requirements involved in shepherding this complex project through and around many administrative obstacles, including a major one called Urban Land Use Review Planning (ULURP). It required dozens upon dozens of meetings, with the community board, local politicians, preservation and environmental groups, the Business Improvement District (BID), and the New York City Council itself.
Block for block, resident by resident, activist organization by advocacy group, pound for pound, the Upper West Side was well-known for its vigorous exercise of the First Amendment, for its proclivity to litigate, and for its constant courting of controversy. No resident organization competed with Lincoln Center for the privilege of assuming the responsibility to cope with these often contentious forces.
There was the matter of the expenses of the Lincoln Center Development Project (LCDP): this staff group would oversee the work of Diller + Scofidio; convene the dozens of design review and organizational meetings required; master the intricacies of city rules; and set up competitions for the selection of theater designer, engineering firm, acoustician, and executive architect, among many other design and construction responsibilities. There was also the cost of research needed to mount a comprehensive, cohesive, capital campaign. Lincoln Center paid for it all.
If that were not enough, the deal closer was that for every approved artistic capital project, Lincoln Center volunteered to raise matching funds to those collected by the constituents, 20 percent of the first $25 million and 15 percent of everything above $25 million, up to a total of $120 million.
This unprecedented, concrete, dollars-and-cents offer came as a total surprise to the constituents of Lincoln Center. They had no reason to expect it. The proposal certainly caught their attention. It helped them to imagine what might be possible for their own facility wish lists.
For the School of American Ballet, the dream of Peter Martins was to double the capacity of its dance studios, and Diller’s light-filled, arresting design delighted her client.
At Lincoln Center Theater, Andre Bishop advocated strongly for a third theater space, one dedicated to promising playwrights, directors, and actors introducing new work. In close proximity to the other performance and rehearsal spaces of the theater, this newcomer, designed by architect Hugh Hardy, was also to feature a rooftop outdoor space overlooking the Paul Milstein Pool and Terrace, the place in which the famous Henry Moore sculpture was situated. Bishop was passionate in his advocacy for a new venue, later named the Claire Tow Theater, that would allow promising artists using it to mix and mingle with the veterans staging productions at the much larger Mitzi Newhouse and Vivian Beaumont Theaters.
The Juilliard School aspired to a major 38,500 square feet of expansion and 58,000 square feet of renovation. It would accommodate practice rooms, rehearsal spaces, studios, study carrels, a library and archive, lounges, places to dine, and new and expanded performance venues. Once inward-looking, in the hands of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, students could peer out of the school and easily view the stages where they longed to perform professionally upon graduation.
What Juilliard, the Chamber Music Society, Lincoln Center itself, and the Film Society had in common was that all desired a modernized and much-improved Alice Tully Hall to call home. For Juilliard, Tully was the place where its orchestra and chamber music groups performed most. For the Chamber Music Society, Tully was literally created to be its home, financed by Alice Tully for that very purpose. For Lincoln Center, Tully was a venue receptive to diverse presentations of musicians and ensembles from around the world. There was chamber music. There were solo recitalists, vocalists, and instrumentalists, including organists utilizing the splendidly refurbished and renovated original Kuhn organ, soon to be reinstalled in the auditorium. There were chamber symphonies. Choral music. Jazz. Popular song. And even theater pieces and dance. For the Film Society, its two-week, world-famous New York Film Festival that opened the season was to return there.
The special accommodations shaped for these diverse needs by D S + R (design architect), Fisher Dachs Associates (theater designer), Jaffe Holden (acoustician), FXFOWLE (executive architect), and Arup (engineer) were nothing short of breathtaking. By installing sound-absorbing curtains lowered for film showings and moved out of sight for music, Alice Tully Hall would accommodate extremely well two art forms with opposing sound requirements. By allowing for stage extensions, the seating in Tully could be set up in three configurations, from 1,100 down to 850 seats. Smaller audiences could enjoy more experimental or contemporary work closer to the action, while dance and theater pieces could use the larger stage.
With the creation of an outdoor plaza accommodating 250 people and bleacher seating with equivalent capacity, a new performance venue had been born. It surprised and delighted residents and visitors exiting the busy subway station at 66th Street and Broadway. In addition, ticketholders could relax while waiting for their curtain time. And red carpets could be rolled out for stars to take their turns in front of the paparazzi.
The vaulting glass wall treated Broadway as a virtual stage set for those dining at Marcus Samuelsson’s American Table in the lobby of Alice Tully Hall or imbibing a drink at its romantic, undulating bar looking east across that world-famous boulevard.
And above the Morgan Stanley lobby, one could find upstairs the Hauser lounge, graced by an outdoor terrace. Like the space below, it was frequently used for receptions and gala dinners, a crucial need never contemplated in the original design.
Add to all of this an expansive box office; special handicapped access; and a hall interior so comfortable, intimate, and stunning as to evoke amazement, most of all from those who knew the old Tully and had anticipated change with apprehension. They needn’t have worried.
Working with the Film Society, the architect David Rockwell designed two new screening rooms, an amphitheater, and a canteen called Indie, to complement the Walter Reade movie house across the street. If there is a better, more inviting spot to view a movie than at the Elinor Bunin Film Center, anywhere, show me the way to it.
What the generous matching grant offer to constituents meant, as a practical matter, was that Lincoln Center, the organization I ran, became the single largest donor to all but one of every participating resident organization on the campus. And for what purpose? To help them realize their highest-priority artistic and educational ambitions.
Now what self-respecting trustee of any organization associated with Lincoln Center would fail to find this total incentive package less than attractive? All we asked for in return was a semblance of civility and a willingness to work long hours in good faith on problem solving and resolving conflict. Implicit in the individual bilateral legal arrangement Lincoln Center negotiated with each of its constituent organizations was an understanding that the project as a whole would be allowed to go forward. The formal veto power inherent in LCDP governing rules would be exercised, if at all, only when absolutely necessary.
In essence, Lincoln Center suggested that the constituents define carefully their vital interests. Informed views on these issues would be taken fully into account in an effort to satisfy and to avoid the casting of any veto. As to marginal interests, opinions really, on matters that were hardly central to an organization’s operation or artistic future, it was informally understood that no veto would be exercised.
This was the formula that propelled us forward. This was the attractive and magnetic force that would eventually woo the “big guys”: the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, and the soon-to-be-christened David H. Koch Theater and its occupants. In time they, too, could not resist cooperating.
And why not? Beyond the benefits enumerated here, there was even more to come.
THE DEAL LINCOLN CENTER offered to induce constituent cooperation was extraordinarily generous. It became even more so as detailed negotiations with each resident organization ensued. For the most part, we responded affirmatively to constituent requests supplemental to our already plentiful offer.
Call us magnanimous. Call us eager to please and indulgent. Or call us pushovers.
Our attitude was clear. We had overcome significant resistance and had built important forward momentum. No single supplemental request seemed so excessive as to warrant tediously long negotiations, let alone a project standstill. We did not wish to have our collective progress slowed down, with all of the attendant risks and costs. If pursuing this course of action meant raising even more money, so be it.
When, for example, The Juilliard School contended that its new facade, estimated to cost some $17 million, was really just another form of public space and should therefore be considered the financial responsibility of Lincoln Center, we gulped and then yielded in the interest of moving forward.
Building what is now known as the Claire Tow Theater, a third venue with an audience capacity of 112, to be added to the 1,089-seat Vivian Beaumont Theater and the 297-seat Mitzi Newhouse Theater, was estimated to cost $30 million. In view of Lincoln Center Theater’s cooperation with such features of redevelopment as placing a garage entrance to its immediate east, we departed voluntarily from the 20 percent match formula and offered 50 percent, or $15 million.
The only constituent in favor of building a footbridge across 65th Street was the School of American Ballet (SAB). All others either opposed the idea or were indifferent to it. But the executive director of SAB, Marjorie Van derCook, longed to have an elevated crossing for students to safely cross the street on their way to and from the David H. Koch Theater. This wish was totally supported by her board of directors and by Peter Martins. The sculpturally expressive span that was ultimately put in place pleased everyone. It carried an $8 million price tag, picked up entirely by Lincoln Center.
Concessions were advanced to other constituents as well, above and beyond the standard package of rich incentives.
They all added up. In the end, of the $1.2 billion campuswide capital campaign a total of $790 million was Lincoln Center’s share. Nearly $120 million of it was sent directly to constituents, either in the form of matching their own fund-raising or offsetting their costs directly. Nothing like a financial challenge of this size had ever before been undertaken. Raising this sum during the same eight years in which we required about $40 million in donations annually to balance Lincoln Center’s own operating budget increased the total to $1.1 billion as our sole responsibility.
Lincoln Center is not a university with thousands of loyal alumni. Institutions like New York University and Columbia University are fund-raising machines. They no sooner complete one capital campaign than they launch another. They employ hundreds of fund-raisers. They organize by school and by graduating class. They exert all kinds of peer pressure.
Lincoln Center is not a hospital, blessed with grateful patients and their relatives, those who have left their lives in its care or hope for excellent service when they are in need.
In its first-ever massive renovation, everything depended on Lincoln Center meeting its unprecedented fund-raising commitments. Paying our bills on time. Setting an example for constituents who needed to satisfy their own ambitious funding goals. Avoiding reductions in scope or quality of work. Brooking no delays in construction.
Simultaneously, Lincoln Center continued to manage the campus and its annual support to constituents in financially beneficial ways. Each year I prepared an annual report card detailing all of the services provided by Lincoln Center to the constituents, as a group and individually. Leaving aside matching funds associated with redevelopment, in fiscal year 2012 these benefits totaled $12.9 million.1
WHY WAS I SO CONFIDENT that we could climb this fund-raising Mount Everest? Although the goal was daunting and unprecedented, Lincoln Center enjoyed some major advantages.
There was Lincoln Center’s board. By 2008 it had almost doubled in size. It was possessed of considerable net wealth. Its members were deeply involved in the life of the institution. They were also extremely well connected to pools of capital controlled by corporations, foundations, privately held firms, and individuals of every kind and from every walk of life. Lincoln Center’s board was highly ambitious and strongly motivated.
The trustees would take the lead in giving and getting.2
In its fifty-year history Lincoln Center had never engaged in a comprehensive, campuswide capital campaign. When we approached prospects, corporate and individual, who had never given a donation to Lincoln Center, none could claim that we had worn out our welcome.
Our case was compelling. The need for comprehensive renovation was almost self-evident. The architectural design was stunning. Lincoln Center’s reputation was very strong. Prospects were impressed that in place of divisiveness and turmoil, cooperation and collaboration were now taking hold.
Lincoln Center enjoyed a valuable asset, hiding in plain sight: naming opportunities. We had an abundance of them in our outdoor spaces and our buildings. Unlike colleges and universities, which typically offered high-end donors the chance to have programs, departments, professorships, or even entire schools named after them, Lincoln Center had rarely done so.
Many companies liked the idea of having their multi-million-dollar gifts memorialized by a naming. The Morgan Stanley lobby. The Barclays Grove. The Hearst Plaza. Why not have customers, clients, partners, investors, and employees proudly take notice of company philanthropy? Why not burnish the corporate brand by associating with the visibility and the prestige that Lincoln Center enjoys?
For individuals, naming provided the chance to honor parents, a spouse, a friend, or a highly valued colleague. It is a nice feeling to have children or grandchildren admire your generosity to a place from which they now benefit.
For those not averse to public identification, the attractiveness of Lincoln Center’s redeveloped spaces and our institutional reputation combined to render naming opportunities a valuable campaign offer.
Our appeal went well beyond the content of the performing arts. It highlighted Lincoln Center as an engine of economic development. As an educator of kids and families. As a source of civic pride and of social cohesion. As a major tourist attraction. As another compelling reason why talented people would be drawn to New York City to live and to work.
The fund-raising pace was relentless. Rarely did a day pass without at least three face-to-face solicitations by members of the group. The chair, Frank Bennack, was fond of observing that any call from him was a collect call. David Rubenstein, the chair of the Capital Campaign, took on hedge funds, private equity, investment firms, and money-centered banks as his principal assignment.
Both men are extraordinary fund-raisers. They believe that a successful sales approach combines biography (their own and that of the prospect) and the cause. Properly briefed with up-to-date research on the potential donor, each was relaxed, focused, and unflappable at meetings. After exchanging pleasantries, inquiring about the state of the prospect’s business, or the condition of the city, or the challenges before the nation, they would ask after members of the family or mutual friends. Bennack and Rubenstein would then state Lincoln Center’s case, personally and compellingly.
Here is a version of Bennack’s pitch:
After the attack on 9/11, I am, as the CEO of Hearst Corporation, exceptionally proud that my company became the very first to announce an intention to erect a new headquarters building here in New York City, one designed by Norman Foster.
We hoped this corporate affirmation about New York’s bright future would be widely emulated. In parallel, as Hearst’s President, I began to think of what I, born and raised in Texas, could personally do to express my thanks to this great town. Giving the matter lots of consideration and entertaining several possibilities, I concluded that being the Chairman of Lincoln Center at this exciting time in its history would be the most important role I could play.
As Lincoln Center approaches its 50th anniversary, the nation’s oldest and the world’s largest and most prominent performing arts center, has planned to reinvest in its physical plant. The design is comprehensive and elegant. It addresses all of the major public space, infrastructure and artistic needs of twelve world class constituents.
Collectively, all of Lincoln Center’s resident organizations spend over $800 million annually. They attract over 5 million Americans and tourists to the campus each year. In addition, more than two thousand full-time students study at the much acclaimed School of American Ballet and The Juilliard School. Nothing of this size, diversity and quality in the performing arts exists in any one place anywhere else.
As a major source of civic pride, an engine of economic development and a center of artistic excellence, we need to raise a total of roughly one billion to get this job done.
New York City is on board with the commitment of $240 million. New York State and the federal government have each pledged $30 million. That leaves in excess of $700 million to be raised privately and we expect the board of directors of Lincoln Center to unanimously participate and to collectively donate the critical mass of that sum.
I am here this morning to ask you to please consider joining me and Hearst with a leadership gift of no less than $10 million.
You will not ever regret being a major part of this rejuvenation of a singular set of institutions. It is early in our campaign. But so far no one has turned us down. Please do not be the first to do so.3
Bennack’s reputation and relationships with so many prospects were as solid as his rhetorical skills.
When Rubenstein approached prospects, all of them wondered why a guy who lives in Bethesda, Maryland; who cofounded the Carlyle Group, a major private equity firm headquartered in Washington, DC; and was a trustee of the Kennedy Center would be soliciting a mega-gift for Lincoln Center. They paid attention.
Katherine Farley, who took over major fund-raising responsibilities from both Bennack and Rubenstein, was more reluctant to invoke her own biography or to cite her own generosity, both very formidable. But her persuasiveness, charm, sense of humor, and seriousness of purpose yielded impressive results. In the three years that she was the chair of Lincoln Center and I was the president, twenty-five outstanding trustees were added to our board. Virtually all agreed to leadership gifts to the capital campaign ranging from at least $3 million to $5 million and to contribute $250,000 in annual support.
That kind of financial commitment to a single institution is extraordinary. It was clearly and explicitly requested as part of the invitation to join the board of directors, not just orally but in writing. The admired leadership of Farley resulted in a very high acceptance rate. She is as indefatigable and results-driven a leader as any I have ever met.
These top-drawer trustees would grace any nonprofit board. Wooing them to Lincoln Center was not only a boost to our campaign totals; it was also an enduring contribution to strengthening the institution’s governance and influence. It was also very hard work. During Farley’s tenure while I was her partner at Lincoln Center, every six and a half weeks a new trustee agreed to serve. Bennack, Rubenstein, and Farley were joined by about a dozen other active trustee solicitors for the campaign.
In its June 23/July 6, 2014 issue, Crain’s New York Business featured the results of a study it had undertaken with Relationship Science to determine New York City’s most prominent corporate and civic leaders. Lincoln Center and New York Presbyterian Hospital both ranked number 1 in terms of having more of the best-connected New Yorkers on their boards of directors than any other organization. Of the two hundred individuals named, seventy-eight are either current or former trustees of Lincoln Center or major donors to it, individually or through their place of employment.
Concurrently, the members of the 65th Street Group were also out on the hustings, raising funds. It is noteworthy that never before in their respective histories had the Film Society, the Chamber Music Society, Lincoln Center Theater, the School of American Ballet, and The Juilliard School appealed to more donors, for more gifts of higher size, more successfully. All were engaged, just like Lincoln Center itself, in soliciting for annual needs as well as for their capital projects. Each constituent CEO and his or her trustees stepped right up to that dual challenge with gusto.
For Lincoln Center, while the fund-raising was constant and I was in charge, there were many other demands to satisfy. Meetings with individual constituents to reach formal legal agreement and collective sessions called to arrive at design and construction decisions were booked back to back, day after day, and week after week. Diller + Scofidio described the process in their comprehensive account of redevelopment:
Working with the many [redevelopment] stakeholders was arduous and sometimes contentious. After sitting through hundreds of meetings with still hundreds yet to go, what seemed like a disproportionate ratio of creative work to political strategizing, ultimately led to an important realization: building consensus among the many constituents and boards of trustees, working through the intricate city processes, and satisfying all of the special interest groups—generally enduring all it takes to realize a major project in New York City—required every bit as much creativity as the design itself.4
From my vantage point, one could add to this intimidating agenda many issues and obligations unrelated to our architects and their work. Continuing to present the finest performing arts programs and services in the world and drawing very large audiences to them, even as our campus became a huge construction site. Interpreting our work to ravenous media, who were now eager to learn about the many pieces of redevelopment susceptible to attractive coverage. Raising the $40 million needed each year to sustain Lincoln Center’s programs and services at normal levels. Implementing major changes to the outmoded economic model in accordance with which performing arts centers, like Lincoln Center, had operated ever since we were invented. Constantly building trust between and among staff members and trustees.
I was not joined by many in paying careful attention to the operational costs and the financial consequences of design decisions. For example, all of us grew to love replacing travertine with glass whenever possible, leaving the campus far more inviting and transparent. Glass, however, needs much more frequent cleaning than does travertine. At one point, I observed that if there were any more such decisions, Lincoln Center ran the risk of becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of Windex.
I was joined by a growing cadre of true believers, who functioned without much sleep and without any vacations. The challenge before us was complicated, and time was of the essence. So when Joe Volpe fulminated, castigated, and interrogated, often without purpose, at our meetings and often at a very high decibel level, it was tough to refrain from responding in kind. Familiar with hammers—he was once a carpenter in the Met Opera workshop—Volpe apparently thought that his constituent colleagues were nails. And he hammered away with such ferocity as to suck oxygen from the conference room, leaving its occupants breathless.
Comic relief was in short supply. Soon the conversation focused on a subject that invited humor.
THE WORK ENVISIONED for 65th Street, most particularly new entrances and exits for Lincoln Center Theater, the Film Society of Lincoln Center, and the destination restaurant called Lincoln Ristorante, in addition to a new grand stairway leading up to Josie Robertson Plaza, necessitated the elimination of almost one hundred garage spaces. Notwithstanding the substantial loss of revenue that would result from this reduction, most of us who worked on that very busy block were delighted by the forthcoming change.
There were four vehicular entrances and exits on 65th Street, with many pedestrians walking in front of them all day. Thousands on their way to and from the subway came from the rental apartments and condominiums to the west, many of them built from 2002 to 2014. Thousands were Lincoln Center and constituent employees, students, and visitors. Over three thousand were students, faculty, and staff walking to and from LaGuardia High School and Martin Luther King School. And of course, tens of thousands of ticketholders rushing to one of many active stages used the street every month as well.
We were concerned for their safety, as cars moved very quickly into and out of the garages. Soon, since all of the pedestrian access would be brought down to grade level, the situation would move from bad to worse, unless we intervened. So we reduced the curb cut for parking entry and exit from ninety to eleven feet, eliminating three means of ingress and egress. Now just one entrance, on the southwest side of the street, was created. The result? The safety of all who traversed 65th Street was dramatically improved.
Of the ninety-six spaces being removed, sixty-eight were reserved for “executive parking,” spots for designated administrators and VIPs. I could see my chairman Bruce Crawford’s eyebrows raised at the very use of the term “executive parking.”
The morning following the session at which these numbers were disclosed, Bruce and I were scheduled to meet. He began our conversation by indicating that out of sheer curiosity he had asked his driver to take him through the part of the garage designated for “executive parking.”
“Some executives. Sixty-eight of them! Clearly that list is much too long. Reynold, one of those so-called executives owns a run-down maroon Mercury that should have been consigned to the junk heap years ago.”
“Oh, Bruce, that’s mine.”
So much for my chairman’s view of my mode of transportation. I was relieved that the next subject was not the inferior quality of my worn-out suit.
Just a few years later, Liz and I found ourselves at a fund-raising dinner held at Rockefeller Center. These can be very boring, tedious affairs, so we felt fortunate to be seated next to friends we hadn’t seen for a while, Bill Aguado, the executive director of the Bronx Council on the Arts, and Kathy Pavlick, an executive at Chase Bank involved in corporate philanthropy. The conversation flowed freely. At the end of the evening, I offered to drive them home to their apartment house in Riverdale, not far from our own home.
Bill walked in laborious fashion to the garage, where my cherished Mercury was parked. As it pulled up toward us, this kid from one of the poorest sections of the Bronx, this proud, card-carrying member of the proletariat, saw my car and jokingly uttered these words: “No way. No way am I getting into that wreck. I have a reputation to uphold. I can’t afford to have anyone see me in that thing. Besides, I doubt it can get us home without breaking down!”
In a course I once took on constitutional law at Columbia Law School, I became acquainted with this adage. When Felix Frankfurter, one of the Supreme Court’s most conservative justices, and William Douglas, one of the Court’s most liberal, both jointly dissent from the majority’s opinion, well, the likelihood is that the Court has wrongly decided the case.
When the patrician, Bruce Crawford, and the working-class son of first-generation Puerto Rican and Italian parents both agree that the Mercury must go, do you think there is some merit to their opinion?
Nah. I did not give it up.
AS THE 65TH STREET GROUP’S plans solidified, what had ranged from casual indifference to outright hostility to redevelopment on the part of the New York City Ballet, the New York Philharmonic, and the Metropolitan Opera began to morph into feelings of intense curiosity and latent envy. When the formal announcement of the planned transformation of the public spaces of 65th Street stretching from Broadway to Amsterdam Avenue and the artistic facilities that line it took place on June 12, 2006, hardened skeptics now began to wonder.
Might Lincoln Center and the feisty constituents with which it had joined forces, “the little engines that could,” like the Chamber Music Society and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, and the School of American Ballet, together with The Juilliard School, Lincoln Center Theater, and Lincoln Center Inc., actually raise $400 million? This was the sum initially estimated as the total cost of the building and renovation projects along 65th Street. After all, Mayor Bloomberg, joined by a stalwart group of Lincoln Center trustees and other potential heavy-hitting financial supporters, had turned out for an impressive groundbreaking ceremony, at which the goal was announced.
Progress was reported positively and elaborately in the media. “Sure, sure,” went the refrain of more than a few, “call me when the target is actually reached, when real money is raised.” Once the notifications of solid commitments began to roll out from the City of New York; New York State; the federal government; leading foundations like Alice Tully, Ford, and Hearst; and important private benefactors such as Bruce Kovner, Ann Ziff, and David Rubenstein, that “show-me” attitude became a “what about us?” expression of concern.
The skeptics, cynics, and naysayers, along with the true believers, saw Anthony Tommasini in the New York Times call the transformation of Alice Tully Hall “remarkable” and “an indisputable achievement.” The Los Angeles Times called it “swell,” and the Financial Times “an extremely sophisticated and complex piece of urban surgery.”5
The rave reviews for Tully and the rest of the 65th Street projects continued for months. Justin Davidson in New York Magazine and the New Yorker. Philip Kennicott in the Washington Post. Herbert Muschamp and Nicolai Ouroussoff in the New York Times, Paul Goldberger in the New Yorker, and many others joined in with words of praise.
But even before the completed Alice Tully Hall had been little more than a glimmer in my eye, almost all of those who had sat on the sidelines finally began to realize that the redevelopment train was leaving the station, and they were not on board. Well, not quite all.
If Mayor Bloomberg’s analogy of Lincoln Center to the United Nations Security Council was accurate, then the Met Opera was playing the role of the obstructionist, veto-wielding Russia very well. On issue after issue, procedure after procedure, Volpe’s fulminations amounted to “nyet.”
The New York City Ballet, during the months when Howard Solomon was chair, seemed to be conducting itself like China. Howard’s refrain was constant. What happens on the other side of the plaza “over there” on 65th Street has nothing to do with us, and we want nothing to do with it. It was as if the New York City Ballet had become a Pacific power, with a sphere of influence over Josie Robertson Plaza and 62nd Street, where the New York State Theater was situated. Those institutions located on the Atlantic side, as it were, could go their own way on 65th Street. Less an outright obstructionist than an isolationist, the Ballet could be counted on for resistance during Howard’s tenure.
Howard’s refusal to acknowledge the benefit to the New York City Ballet of the planned $45 million overhaul of the central mechanical plant at no cost to it or any other constituent was baffling. After all, it was the machinery that provided cool air and heat to the New York State Theater, in which the Ballet performed. It had been operating beyond its useful life and was in danger of breakdown. Howard’s fellow trustees felt that his stance flew in the face of reality. Nor did they understand how Howard could deny that planned improvements to the concourses leading to and from the garage and New York City subways would benefit New York City Ballet patrons.
When the redevelopment work was complete, to his credit, Howard explicitly acknowledged what a positive difference it made to the quality of the patron and visitor experience everywhere on Lincoln Center’s campus. “Count me an admirer,” he declared. His Solomonic praise, slow to arrive, nonetheless meant much to me.
As for the New York Philharmonic, after its round-trip to and from Carnegie Hall, what Guenther and Mehta had to say was simply not taken seriously. Many at Lincoln Center and the constituents had become tired of their orchestral bravado. We all had enough of it. The New York Philharmonic needed to heal its self-inflicted wounds. It needed to find new board and staff leadership. It needed to figure out its direction. In 2014, twelve years after I arrived on campus, artists, audiences, and all occupants of Avery Fisher Hall, not least its owner and operator, Lincoln Center, were beginning to witness progress at “The Phil.” But little of it seemed in evidence in the midst of redevelopment planning.
THE SELECTED EMISSARY for the New York City Ballet, the New York Philharmonic, and the Metropolitan Opera was Dan Brodsky, a real-estate developer and himself a Ballet trustee. Brodsky was well liked, a good man, a generous New Yorker. He was soon to become the chair of the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His father had successfully built many apartment buildings on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Brodsky inherited the business and expanded it in that geography and elsewhere in Manhattan.
Periodically, Brodsky would call and prod me to launch a Josie Robertson Plaza working group. He envisioned something not unlike the 65th Street working group that had been skillfully navigated by Bruce Kovner. I smiled. Not long ago Kovner’s group was referred to by many of Brodsky’s colleagues dismissively. Clearly things had changed. A number of former skeptics and cynics on the campus now believed that redevelopment was real. And by then Barry Friedberg, a former senior investment banker at Merrill Lynch, had been named Solomon’s successor as the chair of the board of the New York City Ballet. Appointed in the middle of 2003, his tenure ran for a five-year period. Friedberg took a much more open and flexible view of redevelopment, understanding its many potential advantages. No doubt Brodsky was calling with Friedberg’s encouragement.
At Lincoln Center, we were very busy. We had to fully realize a $400 million design. We needed to engage daily the city, state, and federal governments and comply with their rules and regulations in bidding and construction. We needed to manage engineering, acoustical, and construction firms and their suppliers. Most of all, we needed to be out and about, meeting prospects and raising money.
I told Brodsky of my concern about being distracted by constituents who had not thought through what they really wanted and who did not have a track record of playing well with others. I urged him to talk with his colleagues directly in an effort to assure me that all were now serious and prepared for reasoned discourse. I explained that I did not wish to be diverted from the huge undertaking of completing 65th Street successfully while engaged in some kind of fool’s errand or major detour. Besides, I thought that playing just a little hard to get might provide Lincoln Center with some psychological leverage. Hopefully, Brodsky would prevail on his colleagues to cooperate.
By and large, he and they did so. With the concurrence of Frank Bennack, we asked Brodsky to chair the Josie Robertson Plaza group. The Lincoln Center board offered its blessing. To his enormous credit, Dan guided discussion with tact, patience, and finesse. We began in late 2006 and early 2007 by working through lots of options presented by Liz Diller to replace the fountain. After examining many ideas, we all concluded that our patrons, New Yorkers, and tourists generally liked the current placement of the fountain right smack in the middle of the plaza.
That is where Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder cavort in the film The Producers. It is where Cher in Moonstruck waits, decked out and gorgeous, looking for Nicolas Cage, the brother of her fiancé. Magic ensues. And it is where in Ghostbusters Bill Murray meets Sigourney Weaver after her cello rehearsal. Murray flatters her. “You were the best in your row,” he fawns. With some trepidation, he asks her out on a date. When she accepts, Murray celebrates in a twirling dance. These are examples of how the Lincoln Center fountain is fondly remembered. As the site of love affairs, graduations, engagements, and marriages. Not one known divorce.
From our collective point of view, the frequently used phrase, “Meet me at the fountain,” meant getting together at the existing location. So we asked D S + R to put aside their other imaginative but somewhat impractical and less popular designs. Instead, we suggested that the firm propose an intervention to replace the existing fifty-year-old structure with a modern revision. What they delivered astonished us.
A lighter, more transparent, more open fountain. Lit from underneath during the evening, it seemed to many like a flying saucer about to experience liftoff. Opened up, it allowed water to flow to the edges and invited visitors to move closer. Its disc shape welcomed those who wished to sit facing either the plaza or the fountain itself. What also drew attention was the collaboration of D S + R with Wet Design, the firm that specializes in the mechanics of water flow. Perhaps its best-known work is the Bellagio Fountain in Las Vegas.6
We made clear to Wet Design and to Liz that while we did not regard water displays as an art form, let alone a thirteenth constituent, a little fun in the form of fountain choreography would be welcome. The smiling faces of children and their parents as the fountain was put through its tricks, controlled by sophisticated software and intricate mechanics, testify to its success. As does the sheer number of photographers who show up at all hours to take photos, with or without human subjects in the foreground. Next to the Trevi in Rome, I do not know of a water fountain that attracts more donations of coins.
Having divined an elegant solution for the center of Josie Robertson Plaza, Liz Diller and her team now focused their attention on one of the knottiest and annoying design challenges before us.
At the very front of Lincoln Center was an inner roadway, a drop-off point for ticketholders arriving by limousine, black car, or taxi. These vehicles cut across pedestrians also making their way to Avery Fisher Hall, the New York State Theater, the Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center Theater, or Damrosch Park. I was fond of observing in speeches that if you successfully traversed nine lanes of traffic crossing Broadway and Columbus Avenue on your way to an event, Lincoln Center would reward you with one more opportunity to be hit by some kind of moving vehicle!
What D S + R conceived of was a subterranean drop-off location, one that would allow the main entrance to Lincoln Center to become a true pedestrian plaza. Diller and company seemed to stretch the plaza forward, creating a longer, more gracious entryway featuring elongated risers. As one ascended, the fountain and the classic monumental trio of venues suddenly came into view. They acquired a remarkable, welcoming quality. The arrival at Lincoln Center had become ceremonial, an early indicator that a very special and memorable experience was in store.
Across the back of each riser in the Grand Staircase is a self-contained mini-marquee with LED lighting that displays words of welcome, of coming attractions, and of special significance: the mention of a gala and its honoree, the greeting of a dignitary, the announcement of a birthday or an anniversary, and the like. This feature of the grand entryway caused much concern. Could it be maintained in New York City’s notoriously cold and windy climate? Could the text of messages be seen on a hazy or foggy day? How would the software operate, and was this technology and its maintenance affordable? The creation of careful prototypes actually tested in all kinds of inclement weather and the explanations of geekish, high-tech experts convinced us to give this design feature the go-ahead.
The Grand Staircase scheme proved to be extremely popular. Everyone, it seems, loves to see their name up in lights.
To the left and right of the plaza, D S + R designed stunning glass canopies with entrances astride the stairs that are gentle and sloping. There are also easily accessible ramps complete with banisters to steady one’s step, if needed. They allow theatergoers to arrive most of the time virtually unaffected by the elements.
And down below in the subterranean drop-off, escalators take patrons up to the plaza level and theater entrances totally protected from weather. This is part of a larger underground plan that allows for patron access to and from the subway, along passageways that are entirely refinished and pleasant to walk. So much so that all day long students, Upper West Side residents, and commuters who park their cars at Lincoln Center on the way to work or to shopping regularly use these concourses. They voted yes to this design—with their feet.
When Liz Diller first showed this proposed solution to the assembled constituents and Dan Brodsky asked for reactions, something unique happened in my experience at Lincoln Center. There was stunned silence, followed by acclamation. It was an aha! moment for everyone.
Praise then erupted from all parts of the room. Dan Brodsky noticed that Peter Martins was about to make his exit and that he had not yet spoken.
“Peter, before you leave, what’s your opinion of all of this?”
“I am very impressed with all of these solutions to knotty problems. If we can realize this design, Lincoln Center will be much improved and we will take great pride in the result. But who in heaven’s name is going to raise the kind of money required for this elegant, but I am sure, very, very expensive plan?”
All eyes turned to me.