Corporation Formed to Renovate Music Hall
Talk about diplomacy.
Members of the Music Hall Working Group, charged with the task of coming up with a plan for the renovation of Music Hall, have come up with one, but without consulting other members of the Music Hall Working Group.
Norma Petersen, president of the Society for the Preservation of Music Hall, which has four representatives on the Working Group, told members of her board Friday that they were not consulted and had no input in the decision to form a new organization to assume leadership of the project. The new organization -- called, strategically, the Music Hall Revitalization Corporation, as opposed to renovation -- was announced Friday on behalf of the MHWG by the Cincinnati Arts Association. The CAA manages Music Hall for its owner, the city of Cincinnati.
The MHWG, which has been weighing options for the past two years, is made up of representatives of the CAA, the Cincinnati Symphony, Cincinnati Opera, May Festival and Cincinnati Ballet (tenants of the hall) and SPMH, a volunteer organization that raises money for Music Hall projects and acts as an advocate for the 133-year-old civic landmark.
Be that as it may, it appears that work on Music Hall, long
the subject of “maybes,” “ifs” and “yes, buts” is finally going to take place. With inadequate or outworn facilities, plumbing and wiring in need of replacement, cramped seats and shabby backstage accommodations, it's about time.
According to Friday's announcement, MHRC (a new acronym to remember) “will lead and coordinate all future plans related to Music Hall redevelopment, including planning, design, construction, communications and fundraising.” The latter will be crucial, since the price tag for the project has been estimated at approximately $80 million (a posting at www.cincinnati.com Friday afternoon set the estimate at $92.5 million, including possible cost overruns, losses to tenant organizations during the time the hall will be empty, etc.)
President of the new corporation is Jack Rouse, retired co-founder and chairman of Jack Rouse Associates, a design and project management firm that serves entertainment, sports and museum industries worldwide. Rouse is a member of the board of the CSO, the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation, the Playhouse in the Park and the Cincinnati Zoo. (Incidentally, Rouse also chairs the search committee for a successor to Cincinnati Pops conductor Erich Kunzel, who died in September.)
As president of MHRC, Rouse will appoint a board of trustees, to include members of the Music Hall Working Group and of the community at large. A design architect will be chosen to “determine and direct the overall aesthetic impact” on the hall. This is longhand, no doubt, for keeping everyone happy, for, as the release states: “Of paramount importance to the MHRC agenda will be ensuring that Music Hall remains a world-class performance venue and an arts and entertainment anchor for its Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, while continuing to serve the needs of its resident organizations and the Greater Cincinnati community.”
“The creation of a separate, focused entity will enable the project to move from the formative, conceptual stage into an implementation stage,” said Dudley Taft, chair of the CAA board of trustees. “The Music Hall Revitalization Corporation will bring the project into action, representing the needs and concerns of all user groups, while ensuring and preserving the acoustic and historic integrity of the hall.”
The design architect will work with the existing project team, which includes Theatre Project Consultants, Jaffe Holden Associates (acousticians), GBBN Architects, Messer Construction and Smith Beers Yunker and Company (fundraising).
It is contemplated that Music Hall will be closed from May, 2011 until October, 2012, meaning that alternative venues must be found for CSO, Opera and May Festival events during that time. It will be necessary, also, to find other venues for the World Choir Games, set to take place in Cincinnati in the summer of 2012 (July 4-14). Cincinnati Ballet already utilizes the Aronoff Center and the Opera will likely do so as well, though both will have to deal with decidedly inferior acoustics.
Though far along in its planning stages, a project to build a smaller concert
hall for the CSO in the parking lot adjacent to Music Hall was vetoed by
leaders of the CSO board last year. Re-configuration of the Music Hall auditorium by removing
seats and moving the orchestra further out into the hall would solve many
problems for the CSO. Still, what the
orchestra needs and deserves is a more intimate, mid-sized hall scaled to its
core repertoire. Without doubt, failure
of this initiative played a key role in music director Paavo Järvi’s decision to leave the CSO at the end
of next season.
Louise Dieterle Nippert's spectacular $85 million gift to the CSO in December may not be used for Music Hall renovation, but is an endowment fund that will generate much needed annual revenue for the orchestra, about $3 million each year, according to CSO officials. (See also "CSO Update from Presient Trey Devey," Feb. 11 on this site.)