Should Parcel 5 be developed for a theater or for housing and commercial use?
City officials announced this morning that if City Council approves, it’ll be both: a 3000-seat theater for the Rochester Broadway Theatre League’s shows with a 150-apartment building on top of it. The apartment portion will be handled by Morgan Communities, which has extensive housing development experience in downtown and the Greater Rochester area.
What Parcel 5 won’t be is a park-like open space set aside for events and temporary vendors such as food trucks. That proposal, called Visionary Square, had strong support from some activists but apparently wasn’t under serious consideration by city officials.
A long strip of open space behind Parcel 5 will remain as public green space.
Earlier this month, there were reports that city officials were ready to award Parcel 5 to Gallina Development for a 14-story tower housing commercial space and condominiums. That proposal and RBTL’s were the major proposals city officials were assessing; a plan from Morgan hadn’t been in the mix.
RBTL has pushed for a new theater downtown for decades, but concerns about its funding, both for construction and for continuing operations, have persisted. RBTL CEO Arnie Rothschild announced recently that philanthropist Tom Golisano would commit $25 million toward a theater.  The possibility of combining the theater with housing seems to have interested Morgan and convinced City Hall.
Morgan’s part of the development will include some “affordable” units along with market-rate apartments. There’ll also be space for retail shops and restaurants on the street level.
The development is expected to create 610 construction jobs, and the apartment complex and theater are expected to create 166 new permanent full-time jobs, says a press release from the city. The developers have agreed to give first preference in hiring to city residents, and to “work with any prospective commercial tenants” in the complex to give city residents first preference in their hiring, says the release.
In addition to bringing apartment residents downtown, the complex is expected to attract hundreds of thousands of theater-goers. Rothschild has said for years that a new, larger theater will permit it to host more shows. And he continues to insist that RBTL will maintain and host shows at the Auditorium Theatre, where it now stages its productions.
While today’s announcement ends the suspense about the future of a key part of Parcel 5, it doesn’t mean ground-breaking for the project is imminent. Financing is still being put together, for instance. According to the City Hall press release, city officials have been talking both with the developers and “a host of other potential funding sources.” Given those discussions, the press release says, “the City is confident the project will have the funding needed to bring this project to completion.”
“Once funding has been finalized,” the release says, the city will move ahead with selling Parcel 5 to Morgan Communities and RBTL. Because the sale of public land is involved, that sale will need to be approved by City Council.
Earlier this week, Mayor Lovely Warren sent City Council proposed legislation awarding Parcel 2 of the Midtown site, to Morgan and Buckingham Properties, if funding is secured. That site is at East Broad Street and South Clinton Avenue.
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This article appears in Apr 5-11, 2017.
No surprise…it’s the fast ferry on land. Rochester is square, but not Visionary 🙂
What’s the plan to employ currently unemployed city residents in the construction or in the operation of this performing arts center?
Sigh. What a missed opportunity…
I guess the Mayor did’t read the Broadway League’s research study that showed:In the 20132014 season, Broadway shows touring across North America drew 13.8 million attendances.
Seventy-one percent of attendees were female.
The average age of the Touring Broadway theatregoer was 53 years.
Ninety-two percent of Touring Broadway theatregoers were Caucasian.
Seventy-six percent of the audience held a college degree and 34% held a graduate degree.
Forty-nine percent of national theatregoers reported an annual household income of more than $100,000, compared to only 22% of Americans overall.
It turns out that touring broadway shows are not the only events that happen at the Auditorium theater. Have you never seen a concert or comedian there?
I am glad the RBTL will be staying downtown and am happy to see a residential component added to the project as well. The massive density of people moving into the general Midtown area is going to pay off big time for Main Street and downtown in the near future, I can’t wait.
This mayor is hell bent on giving the Sect. 8 opportunity to live along side, literally, those who pay full price for their unit. Why would I want to pay full price knowing full well that I may be living next door to a family of 5 and all their visiting kin that rotate every two weeks?
This is what happens when you ask for government dollars.You have to succumb to the will of the people. This place will end up like the Cadillac Hotel. I feel sorry for Mr Golisano, throwing his money away.
As always, no place park.
It’s funny that some were outraged by the idea of the city losing the performing arts center to a suburban location, yet the center will attract mostly people from the suburbs and most likely employ people from the suburbs. It will be a suburban satellite island in the middle of the city.
It’s also funny, to me at least, that there is supposedly some efforts being focused on poverty in the city and yet these big announcements don’t include any plans on how these projects could help those who are unemployed and living in poverty. But maybe it’s not surprising, after all this is for the suburbanites who have little, if any, concern for what’s going on in the city.
Someone’s sleeping on the sidewalk
As the winter sun goes down
Someone’s drinking cold champagne
In another part of town
And the only thing he thinks about
As he sips his glass of wine
It sure feels good sitting here tonight
Now that I’ve got mine
I’ve got mine, I’ve got mine
This isn’t such a bitter world
‘Cause I’ve got mine
Someone’s wandering the streets tonight
No way to warm his hands
Someone’s turning up their fireplace
Making travel plans
His mind is on some sandy beach
Where the sun is gonna shine
He thinks “I don’t have to hang around
Now that I’ve got mine”
You see them in their limousines
You see the way they stare
They don’t see us looking back
Because they don’t really care (they say)
I’ve got mine, I’ve got mine
The world is as it’s meant to be
‘Cause I’ve got mine
So I make a small donation
What more can I do
You know I didn’t make this world
I’m in it just like you
I’ve worked all my life on this house of cards
To keep it all in line
I can’t take care of everyone
Now that I’ve got mine
There’s another kind of poverty
That only rich men know
A moral malnutrition
That starves their very souls
And they can’t be saved with money
They’re all running out of time
And all the while they’re thinking
“It’s ok ‘Cause I’ve got mine”
I’ve got mine, I’ve got mine
I don’t want a thing to change
‘Cause I’ve got mine, I’ve got mine
Songwriters: FREY, GLENN LEWIS / TEMPCHIN, JACK
I’ve Got Mine lyrics Warner/Chappell Music, Inc., Red Cloud Music
Tom Janowski, you paint with an extremely broad brush in your attempts to reinforce stereotypes of suburbanites, wealthy and successful people, the unemployed, poverty-stricken, etc. Lump-summing people into faceless identity groups serves no purpose other than to further polarize society, something “progressives” have finely tuned to a science as a successful means of political control. Despite what your song implies, all wealthy folks are not greedy misers nor are all poor people innocent victims. Life is not quite that simple.
This is a disaster. I want a performing arts center that’s affordable and can be supported by a subscription base and sponsorship. I have spent a good part of my life being an artist as well as supporting the arts. The RBTL is an amazing organization and provides great resources to the community as well a youth enrichment camp. It is well managed for the level of the current theater size and the base of support that it enjoys. It generates 8 Million a year in tickets sales. Its cost to bring in the shows is roughly 6 Million. It clearly does not have sufficient endowment or capital to fund itself even with generous donors like Mr. Gollisano.
To take a public land that we spent over $150 Million to stabilize and clean up from asbestos and gift it tax free to another not for profit is insanity. Rochester currently has ten weeks total in RBTL show out of 52 weeks and these shows are not sold out with the exception of Wicked. To borrow a title from the amazing ballet dancer Gelsey Kirkland “We’re dancing on our grave”. We have Two Stadiums (Soccer and Baseball), Dome Arena (Privately Owned), Water Street Music Hall, Nazareth Auditorium, Lyric Theater and many more and I can tell you know if they could have 50% capacity in sales they would be delighted but they don’t. Thousands and thousands of seats go empty every night in this town I love. Countless nights of darkened theaters need not now include a Temple of Theatrical Egos. It’s a lie, it’s a sham and it won’t work!
Build it and they will come. If they don’t come, taxpayers will be forced to subsidize it. It’s all good.
Editor’s note here: I’ve deleted several comments in this thread because they were insults directed at other commenters. That’s not the purpose of our comments section. Let’s talk about — criticize, praise, question — the project, not one another.
Tom Janowski – As my grandpappy used to say, the trick is to know who’s a visionary, and who’s just seeing things. I’m still waiting for “visionary” Bill Johnson to be held accountable for wasting tens of millions of our tax dollars on a ferry that was obviously doomed from the start. Likewise the millions that went down the drain with High Falls. We dodged a bullet when RenSquare crashed and burned. And the jury is still out on the proto-boondoogle housing and hotel project in Charlotte. Now it appears that we’re going in the tank for millions for the performing arts center.
Since my recent comment was deleted, cuz I named names and spoke what I thought was the truth, I will be more vague.
Brighton has a lot of room for this theater, I think it would serve the public better if they built it out there. Many developers that do the public a service by building for their needs might want to get together on this. It’s a win-win situation.
Jerry Nelson…many of us know things that our leaders fail to comprehend or more likely, simply ignore. Big projects don’t guarantee big successes or big returns on investment or job creation. Big projects guarantee only one thing: big expense initially and maybe continual expense. Worst case scenario with big projects is big failures.
The fast ferry sank like the Titanic. High Falls died a slow death. In my hometown of Elmira, NY, the downtown savior was a hockey arena and hockey team. The arena has struggled to survive since its inception, changed ownership a few times and was just recently saved again just in time for the news that the hockey team has folded. Does anyone learn from history?
Where are the organically grown, slow and steady, ground swells of small developments that have a chance to change while the develop? Visionary Square seemed like a better than usual idea along those lines.
Tom Janowski – It isn’t just that our elected officials fail to learn from the civic development mistakes of their predecessors, it’s that they and their media supporters literally hype the hell out of every project and declare them successes before the first shovel of earth is turned. It’s that questions and dissent are sidelined into one or two poorly-publicized public hearings. It’s that those cheerleading the projects find on-going outlets in the local media for their blue sky visions while dissenters are reduced to writing Letters to the Editor, which tend to be left unpublished. And finally, it’s that no matter how much of a fiscal fiasco the projects collapse into, no one is held accountable either by the voters or the media and we march merrily along to the next pre-ordained success.
TJ – Disappointing to hear about the Jackals(2300 avg attendance) , but not overly surprising. Even populated cities like Norfolk(2984), Atlanta(4738), and Cincinnati(4214) have problems filling seats for their ECHL teams.
Elmira, NY should be studied to learn what not to do. Mark Twain: The Musical 1987-1995 failed with tons of debt. The National War Plane Museum was a fiasco from start to finish. The hockey arena is just the latest in a long line of poor decisions that just keep happening.
That the city would be considering an unfunded proposal over a private funds risked proposal is the only evidence I need to see. How many times have we seen this touted mix of private funds mixed with public tax dollars proposal to make an unsustainable business? (You could call them state grants, but I will call them tax dollars because they are)
BTW: Thank You! to Tom Golisano for his extensive philanthropy but the answer to everything in this region cannot be use Tom Golisano’s money.
The reason we use business proposals is that scrutiny uncovers flaws that would make businesses unsustainable. For politicians to ignore that scrutiny is just irresponsible stewardship. The city does not need to build another project that loses tax dollars. If the project is actually sustainable, let someone take the risk with private equity and reap potential rewards.
We have a shrinking population and a shrinking tax base and the city should adjust to meet the actual projected demand for services. The best the city can do for its citizens is not ferry service or more theaters. Government service are at best limited to those services private firms cannot provide. Policing, parks and courts are examples of these. Each time the city tries to involve themselves in social issues; the result is lackluster, if not negative, progress. Yet they suggest more of the same.
No One looks after someone elses money as carefully as they look after his or her own. Here is another example of someone trying to spend someone elses money to get something they think would be cool, but not cool enough to pay for it themselves. Am I the only one who can spot a trend?