They Told Me Not to Take that Job: Tumult, Betrayal, Heroics, and the Transformation of Lincoln Center (16 page)

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.

T
HE 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.

A
S THE 65TH
S
TREET
G
ROUP’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.

T
HE 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.