After
nearly 10 years of costly studies and deliberations, the Performing Arts Center
project is no longer a city-county venture. Since it’s now being discussed as
part of the whole Renaissance Square concept, the PAC falls under the oversight
of the Renaissance Square Corp., a subsidiary of the Rochester-Genesee Regional
Transit Authority. RGRTA Director Mark Aesch is also executive director of
Renaissance Square Corp.
Renaissance Square is the largest
and most significant development project downtown has seen in years. But city
officials seem to be taking a backseat in the planning at this stage. Mayor
Bill Johnson remains supportive of the project, but says there are many
questions yet to be answered.
Johnson discussed the project with City Newspaper in a recent interview.
City: Over the last decade, $350,000 in public money has been
spent on Performing Arts Center planning. Since the project has changed so
drastically, has all that money gone to waste?
Johnson:
You’d have to ask the county executive that. I made a point to her that
there’s already been a lot of detail work on this project. There’s a scale
model. It was designed for one site. I even said to Mark Aesch, rather than
reinvent the wheel, at least you and Maggie [County Executive Maggie Brooks],
who haven’t even seen this work, should take the time to look at it so you
don’t go out and spend money we’ve already spent, because that work can be
recycled and they should consider that. Clearly the people who are going to
have to respond are Maggie and Aesch, because the money is flowing through
them.
City:So what’s the city’s role in the project? Is
the county in charge?
Johnson:
The context of this is that the project will be using money that has
already been earmarked for county projects — the MCC and transit center
components of the plan. That money could be used to leverage additional
government funding and private money for the Arts Center.
My point to Maggie and Aesch is that
these are questions you’re raising that are on the minds of a lot of people in
the community. And these questions have to answered and developed out in the
public eye. I keep getting an affirmation of that when I meet with Maggie and
Aesch. But in the meantime there seems to be more emphasis placed on marketing
this thing. You know, we’re dealing with the sizzle.
We’ve got to hear the details.
There’s no design work. There is speculation that this process is going to go
as far as the Granite Building, that they’ll take it down to St. Paul Street.
But there’s no confirmation of that. That the Farash buildings are either going
to be demolished or renovated: there’s no confirmation of that.
Here we are four or five months
after this concept first emerged. The public needs more to sink its teeth into
than it currently has. My role has been to push to get those kinds of details
out in the open.
City:
What do Maggie and Aesch say when you
tell them that?
Johnson: I get “Oh yeah, absolutely.” The key is to get it done. We need to create a
very open public process, [hold] design charettes as a way to engage people.
There has to be a lot of public discussion.
There has always been a significant
body of opposition to the transit center. And that’s not going away. With the
Arts Center, everybody has embraced it, but there are still differences, as you
can tell with the material coming out of the Arts & Cultural Council.
There’s still no consensus among various groups that would be using this.
You go through the process of
discussion. You negotiate and create consensus. The PAC could add 50 percent to
the cost of the [Renaissance Square] project. And I don’t care what anybody
says — it’s not all coming from the public sector. There’s going to have to
be some significant private money put into it. We have to go through a process
now that would enable us to develop a base of support that would allow us to
pour money into this project.
The second issue that no one wants
to talk about is: Once you build it, how are you gonna operate it? If we’ve
learned anything from the War Memorial, the Convention Center, and Frontier
Field, those are questions that are not going to go away. And they’re going to
haunt you because that means the public continues to subsidize these things
long after they think they’re done with them.
Aesch
and Brooks will lead a panel discussion on the Renaissance Square project on
Wednesday, May 12, in the HSBC Auditorium, 100 Chestnut Street, at 6 p.m. Open
to the public. Info: www.ripn.info. $5
This article appears in Apr 28 – May 4, 2004.
