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Kennedy Center plans 1st expansion since opening

Wednesday - 1/30/2013, 8:21am  ET

Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is planning its first major expansion since it opened in 1971 as a "living memorial" to President John F. Kennedy, with new features including pavilions to house rehearsal halls and classrooms, a memorial garden and a floating stage on the Potomac River.


New marble pavilions _ made from the same Italian Carrara marble as the original building's walls _ would rise from a new garden situated beside the center, and the pavilions would be connected underground. Most of the new facility, totaling about 60,000 square feet of usable space, would be buried below the surface to help preserve the silhouette of the center's primary building.



"We're giving a great improvement in public access to the Kennedy Center, to our art making," Kaiser said. "It's going to allow us to engage our audience in new and different ways."



"The Kennedy Center is a living memorial. It's active, open to the public for performance, the arts, which he really believed in," Holl said.


"The idea really is that the landscape is activated," a fusion of architecture and landscape features, Holl said.



"I'm ready for the fight," he said.


The new expansion plans come more than 10 years after the Kennedy Center announced a major project to build two new buildings and a plaza over a nearby freeway to connect the center with the National Mall. The $650 million project was essentially canceled in 2005 after budget constraints forced Congress to eliminate $400 million in federal funding for the project.

Kaiser envisioned a museum of the performing arts as part of that project. Now, he said, the center can plan future exhibition galleries in its main building as education programs and rehearsals move to the new facilities.

Rubenstein, a billionaire businessman and a former vice chairman of New York City's Lincoln Center, said the Kennedy Center has been limited by its building over the years. So he wanted to plan a realistic project that could be privately funded without relying on Congress. As the federal budget tightens, Rubenstein said more Americans should consider supporting nonprofit federal entities like the center.

Rubenstein's gift is the largest in the center's history. Combined with previous gifts, he has donated $75 million, making him the center's largest donor.

Adding a garden and outdoor pavilions will make the center more inviting, Rubenstein said.

"Rarely do people say in Washington, `I'm going to go over and spend a couple hours at the Kennedy Center,'" Rubenstein said, noting it's often an evening destination for shows. But that will change, he said. "What we wanted to do was to remind people that this is a living memorial to a president."


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