The World Trade Center Performing Arts Center, or PAC WTC as it wants to be known, is adapting to its current financial situation changing its vision for the future, the Wall Street Journal reports. At one point, the center was to have a 1,000-seat auditorium. As of January, the plan was for three combinable theaters seating 550, 350, and 150 people. Now, with the budget cut from $350 million (or $400 million) to just $200 million, the plan calls for two combinable theaters seating 600 to 700 people and 200 people with two upstairs venues that could be either theaters or rehearsal studios. The building, located in between One World Trade Center and 2 World Trade Center, would be three- to four-stories-tall.
Last year, the center scrapped a design by starchitect Frank Gehry and hired Young Vic artistic director David Lan to run the performance operations. The plan still includes a café on the ground floor. It will be presented to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation later this year.
New York City is hardly a place starving for cultural venues and that could make fundraising a challenge. "I think a clear story line about why we are doing this, and how we are going to do this, and when we are going to do this, is required to put all of the pieces in place and get the funding to get it done," Michael Kaiser, chairman of the DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the University of Maryland and former president of Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, told the Journal.
About $160 million in federal funding has been allocated to the project. but PAC WTC director Maggie Boepple wouldn't say how much money they had raised. However, renowned director-choreographer Susan Stroman now sits on the board. Previous reports said the center could open in the next three to four years.
· New Plan, Again, for WTC Performing-Arts Center [WSJ]
· Design-less WTC Arts Center Still Searching for an Architect [Curbed]
· Embattled World Trade Center Arts Center's Budget Halved [Curbed]
· The Status of the World Trade Center Complex, 14 Years Later [Curbed]
· All WTC Performing Arts Center coverage [Curbed]
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