Another jewel lost in Greenway crown
Financing trouble ends plans for $80m cultural center
By Geoff Edgers, Globe Staff | March 12, 2010
Four years after showing off plans for a glitzy $80 million building on the Rose Kennedy Greenway, organizers of the New Center for Arts and Culture have decided to abandon those plans, leaving yet another empty space on the sprawling tract created by the Big Dig.
The organizers, who at one point said they had raised more than $20 million, blamed the economy for making it impossible to bring in enough money to build the Daniel Libeskind-designed structure on a site near Rowes Wharf.
The New Center?s mission has been to develop connections among groups historically separated by race, geography, and religion, through lectures, concerts, art exhibitions, and other events.
The center?s move is the latest setback for the 27-acre Greenway, which was once slated to include several cultural projects, including the New Center, a Boston Museum, and a $70 million Garden Under Glass operated by the Massachusetts Horticultural Society.
Only the Boston Museum project remains alive, if barely, though the Department of Transportation rejected its bid last month for a new site on the Greenway, and it has raised just $8 million of the $120 million it needs, organizers confirmed yesterday.
The YMCA abandoned a plan for a facility on another Greenway site after its price tag climbed to almost $70 million, and it is now working on a scaled-down version.
The New Center?s decision, made this week, came nine years after the late devel oper Edwin Sidman first proposed the center.
?We knew that in this economic environment we were not going to be able to raise the money,?? said developer Ron Druker, a member of the New Center?s board. ?We?re no different than the private fund-raisers, and we?re no different than Harvard University. We just felt it was time for us to make that decision.??
The New Center will not die. Instead, it plans to continue to present programming in a range of venues, from Temple Israel to the Boston Public Library and Boston College?s McMullen Museum of Art. The center?s eight-person staff will continue to plan events from its office on Tremont Street.
?It?s a relief,?? executive director Francine Achbar said of the decision to kill the building project. ?We concluded we should be focusing our energies on programming, which has been so successful.??
Not everybody was pleased about the decision, however.
?It?s frustrating,?? said State Representative Aaron Michlewitz, whose district includes the Greenway. He said that Greenway parks in the North End are vibrant, but the rest of the area is struggling to generate consistent traffic or even a common identity.
?We haven?t seen the activity we?d like to see along its entire length. And that?s what we need to see, especially after 16 years of construction from the North End to Chinatown,?? he said.
?It?s awfully disappointing that the economic situation has impeded the implementation of carefully thought-out plans,?? said Vivien Li, executive director of the Boston Harbor Conservatory. She said she expects some of the plans to be revived, but perhaps not for more than a decade.
Sidman proposed the New Center in 2001 as an institution supported largely by the Jewish community but with a broader cultural reach. In 2003, the center formed a board and hired the renowned Libeskind, an architect whose buildings include the Jewish Museum in Berlin and the Denver Art Museum?s expansion. That same year, the center launched its first program, ?Words on Fire,?? a multimedia festival inspired by the 70th anniversary of book burnings in Nazi Germany.
More recently, the New Center has launched programs for young professionals and families and brought a range of speakers to town, from New Yorker cartoon editor Robert Mankoff to composer Osvaldo Golijov. ?The Great God Debate,?? scheduled for March 23 with writer Christopher Hitchens and Rabbi David Wolpe, has sold so many tickets it has been moved from a 400-seat space at Temple Israel to the 1,000-seat John Hancock Hall, Achbar said.
?The board concluded that our programming has been so successful in these multiple venues we?ve used, and that there?s a real benefit at the moment . . . to having flexibility,?? said Achbar. ?A good model is the Celebrity Series. They don?t own a building and use whatever is appropriate for the size of the crowd.??
Despite not having its own performance space, Achbar said the New Center doesn?t plan to change its name. ?Center is both a physical space and a psychological place,?? she said.
Much has changed since plans for the Greenway were unveiled. The Massachusetts Horticultural Society proposed a botanical center spread over three sites, the Boston Museum project had architect Moshe Safde design a building for a plot near Quincy Market, and the New Center showed off drawings for a dramatic four-story structure with a theater, galleries, meeting rooms, and rooftop terrace.
Now all of those plans have been abandoned. Organizers of the Boston Museum decided to leave a site deemed too expensive to develop because of the challenges involved in accommodating ramps. It applied for another site, but was denied by transportation officials. That property is soon going to be opened for new bids, and the museum plans to reapply.
?We?re alive and kicking,?? said Boston Museum chief executive Frank Keefe. He said the museum project will find it much easier to raise the $120 million it needs if the state will award it the new site.
Thomas Piper, principal research scientist in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that for the Greenway to thrive, there needs to be more coordination between officials, developers, and the general public.
?First, the market is down,?? said Piper. ?But secondly, these projects are always proposed in a vacuum. By vacuum, I mean, developers and the cities look to each individual project as a stand-alone without integrating with the stretch of the city in a better way.??
State officials and Greenway advocates defended the New Center and said they appreciated the organization?s leaders for trying so hard to build.
?It?s too bad, but the Greenway?s success was never predicated on those buildings,?? said Nancy Brennan, executive director of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservatory.
?Its success is precipitated on a well-functioning, highly maintained, and active open space. I?ve heard some people say that now that the Greenway is open, you can actually stand on that parcel and look at the water. It?s a beautifully designed public park that people enjoy.??
Geoff Edgers can be reached at
gedgers@globe.com. Casey Ross of the Globe staff contributed to this story.
