A mid-sized theater is no
longer part of the mix at Renaissance Square.

This
according to both the project architect, Moshe Safdie,
and the project manager, Mark Ballerstein.

Renaissance Square — the
downtown project combining a bus terminal, an MCC campus, and a performing arts
center, was originally supposed to include three theaters. There was to be a
large one for Broadway shows and similar events, a mid-sized space for groups
like the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, and a small theater.

Safdie will be in Rochester in early October to unveil his final conceptual
design. Last week he told City Newspaper that a mid-sized theater won’t be part
of that design. Plans are now for that theater to be located on East Main Street, diagonally across from the Eastman Theatre. Funds
for the mid-size theater may end up being raised separately, and the control may
be passed to City Hall.

The local arts community
hasn’t reached a consensus on what combination of performance spaces it needs, said
Safdie. Lack of money, he suggested, may be part of
the problem.

“I’d say things did slow
down, because there was a great struggle about budget,” he said. “There’s also
great soul searching about the arts program and how much is included and not
included. The objective on one hand is to satisfy all the needs of the
community, which involve a mid-size theater” in addition to the Broadway hall
and a smaller space.

“So there’s
the wish list and the resources,” Safdie said.

“I think the way that things
are resolving themselves is that the Renaissance will go forward with the
Broadway roadhouse and possibly a small — very small — kind of community
auditorium. There is the objective of creating a mid-sized theater in proximity
to the Eastman. And that is now being pursued by the mayor’s office in terms of
the funding and all that. So it’s related but separately programmed and
funded.”

Safdie’s also been involved in preliminary efforts for that
project.

“We actually made a whole
series of sketches for a complex at Eastman, and I think these were useful in
terms of determining cost and availability of land and all that stuff,” he said.

Ballerstein confirmed that the scenario Safdie
described — a large theater and a small one in Ren Square and a mid-sized venue near Eastman — is the
resolution being pursued by the Main and Clinton
Local Development Corporation. (That’s the corporation formed by the county to
create Ren
Square; Ballerstein works for both the county and the corporation.)

A mid-sized theater “really
wouldn’t work well down at Main and Clinton,” he said.

Ballerstein initially said that “there really isn’t a decision
yet” on the arts space, but asked what other options were being discussed, he
replied: “It’s more the relative size and different configurations” than a
change in the overall plan to have a separate theater near Eastman.

“We’re pretty much decided,”
he said. “That bigger direction will not change.”

But if the bigger direction, as he terms it, is settled, the details are far from being
so. That’s still being hashed out by members of the arts community, who are
meeting with officials from the county, city, and the transit authority.

“I would hope we’re two
months away from having consensus,” Ballerstein said.

Safdie’s coming with the designs in half that time, though.
Shouldn’t they have an agreement hammered out by then?

“I’m hoping we do, but I
can’t guarantee it,” said Ballerstein, a bit
ruefully.

So what’s the hold-up? Ballerstein cites the same two factors as Safdie.

“We need to have consensus”
among the arts community, he said, and “it needs to be affordable.” Ballerstein doesn’t say it, but as Safdie
suggests, the latter appears to be a barrier to the former: the resources
versus the wish list.

Money is part of the
picture, agrees Arts and Cultural Council President and CEO Sarah Lentini. She identifies “the shrinking amount of resources”
as “one reason to be extra careful.”

That means building spaces
that are not only as cost-effective as possible to construct, but also the most
cost-effective to operate. Trying to achieve that has so far help keep the
plans from reaching consensus, she said.

“There’s concern about
putting something out there that’s final without having considered all the
alternatives,” she says.

Much of the money for the
performing arts center component of Ren Square is supposed to come from private donors. In fact, the
original impetus for a multi-theater center (which later grew into Ren Square) came from a desire to prevent competing fund drives
for two separate theaters. Now that goal is back up in the air. Ballerstein said the mid-sized theater will cease to be a
part of Rennaisance Square.

“It’ll be a new project, a
separate project,” he said.

It’s too early to tell, he said,
what that will mean for funding or whether there will still be a coordinated
fund drive.

Lentini believes there will be.

“I don’t think that precludes coordinated fundraising,
if not joint fundraising,” she said. “That would be the most logical way to
approach it.”

Ballerstein seems less certain.

“I think that very much
depends on how that other theater is proposed,” Ballerstein
said. “It depends on how focused it may be or how inclusive.” It may also
depend on the new theater’s timing, he said.

And although Ballerstein doesn’t say it, that may depend on who’s taking
the lead on that mid-size theater.

Safdie suggested that the city is going to do that, but
Deputy Mayor Patty Malgieri, the city’s point person
on the project when it comes to the arts space, seemed to believe a decision on
separating out the mid-sized theater had not yet been made.

“That is one of the
options,” she says. “That still hasn’t been brought to a final resolution.”

“If in fact that is the
option chosen, the mayor has expressed the interest in taking the lead,” Malgieri says.

Failure to reach consensus in the arts community or to communicate among
stakeholders may be troubling, but Safdie doesn’t
appear worried.

“Such projects are by
definition complex,” he said. “Anything involving the community and three
levels to four levels of government is complex. And we’re dealing with four
levels of government, several authorities, historic classification, an arts
community which is not single in its voice, but multi-faceted in its voice.
That breeds complexity. Add to that that there isn’t enough money to do the
dream program: by definition that adds more complexity. If we had all the money
we needed and all the voices, that’d be one thing.”

“So you’ve just got to be
patient and persevere and go step by step and deal with every constituency that
needs to be dealt with until you have some measure of consensus and hope that
the public embraces it and the politicians continue to support it and that the
private sector rises to the occasion. For example, we’ve got retail in the
project, and if the private sector doesn’t rise to the occasion because they
have no confidence in downtown, that’s going to be trouble, too.”

Of course, beyond all the
slow machinations that go into any large public project, there’s the small
matter of what the final project will actually look like. Would Safdie be willing to give us a sneak preview of what to
expect when he unveils his latest plans in October?

“Well, it’s very much in the
spirit of what we showed the public before,” he said. “I don’t think there’s
going to be any earthshaking surprises, because in detail there’s a hundred and
one subtle issues about, you know, how you ventilate a bus station and try and
cut the costs down and stuff like that, but the sort of mall that connects Main
Street to the bus terminal, the bus terminal under a landscaped park, the
college surrounding the campus green that we created using the historic
buildings, the theater on Main and Clinton — I mean it’s all in the spirit of
what people have seen. It’s just much more detailed, much more worked out and
much more efficient.”

This article appears in Sep 6-12, 2006.