Frank Gehry Time!

Ground is finally broken on New World Symphony complex

 By Ben Torter

This is what the Frank Gehry-designed digs of the NWS will look like at night from the east.

Not even the steady sprinkle falling onto the outdoor stage could dampen Michael Tilson Thomas’ spirits. This was a big night for the New World Symphony and, with the twirl of his umbrella, its artistic director showed that Gene Kelly isn’t the only one who can sing in the rain.

Tilson Thomas, affectionately referred to as “MTT” by his colleagues, took center stage at last week’s groundbreaking gala for the New World Symphony’s future $200 million, Frank Gehry-designed campus at 1672 Drexel Ave. in Miami Beach, behind its current location at the Lincoln Theatre.

If the upbeat vibe of the evening was any indication, the project will certainly bring attention to the Miami Beach City Center Redevelopment District, a community redevelopment area bounded by 24th Street to the north, West Avenue to the west, 14th Lane to the south and the Atlantic Ocean. However, critics argue that South Florida is already saturated with publicly funded performance venues and fear that taxpayers will end up drowning in unplanned expenses as they did with the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts (now called the Arsht Center) in downtown Miami.

In the lobby of the Lincoln Theatre, just after sundown on Jan. 20, a mixed crowd of local politicians, arts patrons, business leaders and scenesters sipped champagne and cocktails, nibbled on hors d’oeuvres and talked about the importance of the evening to Miami Beach’s renaissance.

The celebration included a performance of George Gershwin’s An American in Paris by the 87-person orchestra, a virtual interview with Gehry and an outdoor show with actual construction cranes and bulldozers twirling and hopping to Alberto Ginastera’s Malambo, while flames and fireworks shot into the night sky.

“To think that we were standing watching what we were watching, the people, the fireworks,” South Beach writer Trisha Posner said. “It’s mind-blowing that we’ve come from Mariel to this.”

The Gehry building represents the next chapter in a city of unlimited possibilities, Posner believes. She and her husband, New York Times-bestselling author Gerald Posner, are writing a book about the growth of Miami Beach from the rough-and-tumble bottom of the ’80s to the high life of the present.

In her opening remarks, Lynn Arison, mother of Carnival Cruise Lines CEO Micky Arison, focused on the sentiment that the new building stands for the city’s incredible transformation. She and her husband, the deceased Carnival Cruise Lines magnate Ted Arison, founded the New World Symphony in 1987 along with Tilson Thomas.

“How were we to get people to come to this area? They were so terrified,” Arison said, referring to the depressed state of Lincoln Road two decades ago. Gradually the New World Symphony renovated the Lincoln Theatre, an old movie house that was built in 1935. “The place had been abandoned for so long it was the home of cats and pigeons,” she remembered, “and you can imagine how smelly that was.”

Much like the revitalization of Lincoln Road, the once-fledgling symphony grew into an internationally recognized teaching academy, where each year more than 1,000 musicians from around the world compete for about 35 three-year fellowships.

“The symphony is the public face of an academy of music which works with postgraduate students in the most sophisticated way,” Tilson Thomas said.

He explained that the Lincoln Theatre is like a “one-room schoolhouse” that the students have outgrown. The symphony will eventually sell the theater to help finance the new center, according to New World Symphony spokesman Craig Hall.

Born of more than five years of collaboration between old friends Tilson Thomas and Gehry, the new building promises to provide more space and rocket classical music into the future with its cutting-edge acoustics and sound and video technology.

“There are lots of possibilities we cannot even see now,” Tilson Thomas said.

A key component will be Internet2, the next generation of Internet that is so fast, a conductor halfway around the world can be beamed onto a large screen on the NWS stage and actually conduct a concert.

Gehry, who was physically located in Los Angeles during the groundbreaking, appeared by Internet2 on a video screen on the Lincoln Theatre stage and took part in a live interview with Tilson Thomas and Capital Campaign Chairman Howard Frank. The talk was moderated by Dan Grech of National Public Radio’s Marketplace.

“This is beyond, beyond, beyond anything that is going on,” Gehry said of the project. “It’s a visual instrument, it’s a musical instrument.”

Scheduled for completion in 2010, the campus marks Florida’s first Gehry-designed project. Gehry is famous for such buildings as the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa, Spain — iconic destinations known for the architecture as much as what they house.

The currently unnamed building will contain a performance space with seating for 700, as well as 360-degree projection. Other features will include a digital music library, 26 individual rehearsal rooms, six ensemble rehearsal rooms, artist suites and administrative offices. Passersby will be able to see some of what’s going on inside the building through a glass wall on the east façade. A future parking garage will connect to the building by a skywalk.

The complex will include a two-acre city park, also designed by Gehry, where people will be able to watch footage of concerts on an outdoor projection wall.

“The concert hall itself can’t be open to the outside [for acoustic reasons], so we’re doing that with film,” Gehry said.

The $200 million project is being funded with taxpayer money from the city of Miami Beach and Miami-Dade County, as well as private donations. Miami Beach, which donated the land, is expected to contribute about $36 million. The county promised $30 million. The rest is supposed to come from private donations, including $5 million from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which the group’s CEO Alberto Ibarguen announced during the groundbreaking ceremony.

Proponents of the project are touting it as the epicenter of arts and culture.

“Miami Beach does need a city center to unify and bring the community together, and doing it through the arts is a great way because the arts unify,” said Ava Rado, executive director of the Center of Emerging Art. “People can come and enjoy the ambiance of a park filled with chamber music and watch the budding of young musicians.”

But the undertaking doesn’t come without its critics. As anyone who drives to Lincoln Road already knows, finding a parking space can be mildly frustrating, to say the least. And the Gehry campus is going smack on top of the two municipal parking lots that are divided by Drexel Avenue and bounded by Lincoln Lane North, Pennsylvania Avenue, 17th Street and Washington Avenue.

The construction will be phased so that one lot will remain open as long as possible. But eventually the second lot will be closed before the new garage is built, admitted Miami Beach spokeswoman Nannette Rodriguez. A garage under construction at the corner of 17th Street and Meridian Avenue was supposed to have been finished already, but as of Monday workers still appeared to be just moving dirt around. The city has added about 60 spaces near the Convention Center, and plans to add more where it can.

To try and mitigate the exacerbated parking situation, Hall said 40 or so NWS employees recently stopped parking at the garage on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 17th Street. They now park at a lot near 16th Street and Collins Avenue.

But parking problems aside, some critics wonder whether there is enough demand to make the project feasible, especially in light of infamous cost overruns and other financial struggles at the recently renamed Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County, formerly the Carnival Center.

“We don’t have enough art lovers to support the center downtown,” said Pierre Asselin, vice president of the South Pointe Tower condominium association. “Now we’re going to open another center five or 10 minutes away. I love the idea, but we’re going to end up subsidizing it with our taxpayer money.”

Asselin did pay a glowing compliment: “At least they picked a great architect,” she said.

Still, positive attitudes prevailed at the groundbreaking. “This is the most important cultural project, probably in the state of Florida, and the Beach is lucky,” said former Miami Beach Mayor Neisen Kasdin, who was part of the commission that first decided to move it forward.

And mingling in the party tent after the fireworks, Arison’s enthusiasm was almost childlike.

“It’s going to put us on the map big time as far as culture,” she said.

Comments? E-mail ben@miamisunpost.com