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Old Theaters Are the Best


The Manhattan Theatre Club moved from its simple beginnings as an off-off Broadway theater to its home at City Center in 1984, and already by the early 1990s there was a clear need for a larger venue because the 300-seat and 150 seat-houses were selling out regularly.

As we began to consider our options, we quickly realized we needed to move to or add a space that would make our productions eligible for Tony awards, for the artists' recognition first and foremost but for the audiences as well. Those theaters must be located in the "Broadway box," essentially between 42nd and 59th streets and between Sixth and Eighth avenues, with 500 or more seats. As you can imagine, that real estate isn't easy to come by.

It took almost 10 years and a number of attempts before we finally focused our attention on the historic Biltmore Theater. We’d looked at it earlier and dismissed it as a ludicrous proposition. While it was built in 1925, and was home to such hits as "The Heiress," "Barefoot in the Park" and "Hair" and served as one of Broadway's favorite playhouses until it closed its doors on December 11, 1987 (ironically the same year as its landmarking), sadly it had become the victim of fire, theft, vandalism, and extensive water damage. Indeed, virtually anything that could happen with a theater happened to this poor little theater. And given the damage, it seemed an unlikely prospect.

By the time we began reconsidering it, almost out of desperation, the site had been taken over by developers Jack Parker and Joseph Moinian who were planning for a high-rise apartment complex next door. Coincidentally, during the same period I was working with Duncan Hazard of Polshek Partnership architects to identify sites and Duncan had been attending a performance of "The Iceman Cometh" at the Brooks Atkinson across the street. Well, that is a rather long play. And so, a couple of intermissions required extensive time on the street, staring and wondering perhaps why we didn’t go back and look at the Biltmore Theater. It was really Duncan’s asking, "why not the Biltmore?" that allowed us to come back and take a second look.

We needed to reconfigure the space from 1,000 seats to a more intimate 650 seats -- essentially business class for everyone –- with ancillary spaces critical to a nonprofit home: meeting space, improved sight lines, audience gathering space, etc. We quickly determined that this endeavor would require a $35 million capital campaign, which was quite an undertaking for an institution that, while it was raising $6 million annually, never before raised more than $3 million in special funds. However, the board of directors, equally committed to the project, along with their colleagues, pledged the first $10 million, which was matched by the developers and the extraordinary leadership of the City of New York soon joined by the state.

So with $20 million in pledges, we were happily ready to kick off our campaign in the late summer of 2001 just as the tragedy of 9/11 unfolded. In the wake of that terrible tragedy -- and soon the economic turmoil that followed -- it would have been very easy to put this project on hold. But our developer partners were determined to go ahead, and fortunately we were blessed with the extraordinary leadership of Manhattan Theatre Club’s chair Peter Solomon and his colleagues who quickly determined that we would go forward despite the difficulties. And so we officially launched the campaign and broke ground just three months later, in December of that year. Ultimately, by last year, we had raised the full $35 million and opened the building on schedule.

Meanwhile, this was an extraordinary expansion of our audience as well. And so having worked together on extended productions of plays -- "Proof" by David Auburn, and "The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, by Charles Bush -- we assembled combined efforts of an in-house staff with some people from outside agencies and partnerships that allowed us to launch a successful branding campaign called "I Want My MTC" to coincide with the completion of the building.

By the time we began our first season, we had 22,000 subscribers up almost 6,000 from the prior year and were selling a hugely expanded number of single tickets. Over the same period of time, we began two years of dialogue with some 14 theatrical unions – we had been dealing with three previous to that point in time -- to reach special operating agreements.

The building opened last fall, acclaimed by audiences and press alike. Over the last 12 months, it was the recipient of several awards, including the Lucy G. Moses Preservation Award from the New York Landmarks Conservancy, thanks in major part to Polshek Partnership.

In a special testimony about the theater before the New York Landmarks Committee in 1987, Ruth Goetz, who co-wrote "The Heiress," said it best: "If you are ever discouraged or disappointed with your life I advise you to go to the backstage door to the Biltmore Theater and enter quietly. Don’t trip over the cables on the floor. Somewhere in there will be the broken remains of a chair. Carry it to the left corner and sit down quietly and listen. You will hear 60 years of laughter and tears and bravos and catcalls, and you will know why playwrights say ‘old theaters are the best.’"

So the building is now open and celebrating its first birthday. We continue to face several challenges including the need for an endowment campaign, additional annual fundraising for the increased activity as our annual budget has risen from $12 million to $18 million and a host of other things.

But nonetheless I am happy to report that a year later we are thrilled to be producing Craig Lucas' play "Reckless" starring Mary-Louise Parker, which is running to great acclaim through December 19. And we found our smaller spaces at City Center to be as important as ever in bringing new works to New York audiences, including "Five By Tenn," a compilation of newly discovered Tennessee Williams' work and John Patrick Shanley's world premiere production of "Doubt" which opens next month. We doubled our education programs and are already at work on the newest play by Pulitzer Prize Winner Donald Margulies, "Brooklyn Boy" starring Adam Arkin, which we look forward to welcoming to the Biltmore stage in January as one of the first new American plays on Broadway this season.

Barry Grove is executive producer of the Manhattan Theatre Club.

 

Related Stories:

Barry Grove: The Manhattan Theater Club Revamps a Legendary Theater
Paul Kellogg: Seeking a New Space for the New York City Opera
Glenn Lowry: The Museum of Modern Arts' New Home
Linda Shelton: Creating a Center for Dance in Lower Manhattan

 

Can Critical Mass Negotiate a Truce?


Related Article:
Cycling in the City

When some 400 New Yorkers took to the streets on their bicycles in 2000, in a ride they called Critical Mass -- an effort to dramatize their claim to roads they see as overly dominated by the automobile -- they had six police escorts on scooters who were so friendly that they thanked the riders for the assignment. But by last month, four years and dozens of rides later, relations between the riders and the police had grown so strained that police arrested 33 participants.

The city had demanded that the group get a permit for its monthly rides. After a federal judge rejected the city's demands, hundreds of cyclists (among them, me) rode en masse around parts of Manhattan on the evening of October 29.

There were some harsh exchanges over the evening's event. Alex Storozynski, editor of AM NewYork, criticized "anarchists" in the group and accused them of beating a motorist and "blocking an ambulance while it wailed." A commentator on E-bikes, the electronic exchange for cyclists in New York, called Storozynski's piece, "spittle-flecked ravings" with "one inaccuracy per paragraph."

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly wrote an op-ed in the Daily News under the headline "Extremists have hijacked the bike rides." Matthew Roth, speaking for Times Up!, a local environmental group closely associated with Critical Mass, blasted Kelly's comments as unethical.

Why have attitudes changed?

For one thing, the ride has grown from the original 400 cyclists; in the March 2004 ride, there were some 2,000 people on bicycles, an astonishing number.

But police say the big change came in the days leading up to the Republican National Convention in August, when, they charge, "anarchists" infiltrated the ride and made it less peaceful. Police arrested more than 250 cyclists during the August ride, and seized many bikes. Since then, the police say, the character of the Critical Mass rides has changed.

But regular riders dispute this claim. Malia Howley, 29, said that the convention ride was an isolated incident, and that Critical Mass has, once again, become what it was before the convention. What has changed, she said, is the city's response. "Now it's helicopters and police everywhere," she said. "They're making a much bigger deal out of it than they need to."

Many observers, including some police officers, wonder why Critical Mass does not simply get a permit for its rides. For one, people involved in the ride say that Times Up! does not want to apply for a permit because the group does not want to take a leadership role in the ride. A permit, they say, would fly in the face of what Critical Mass is -- a "leaderless" group of cyclists traveling in unplanned directions to make a point.

That point is "to make New Yorkers and especially the administration spend more energy and put more resources into making the city friendlier for cyclists, " said Roth. "Do cars need a permit to drive in the street?"

But police say that a permit would improve the safety of the cyclists and help the city better plan for the ride, particularly if an emergency vehicle needs to get through the area. And some observers note that, any cyclists hurt during the ride could sue the city, claiming that the police did not properly protect them.

Ironically, the dispute comes as things are improving for bicyclists in New York. The Bloomberg administration has made a commitment to improve the safety of cyclists in New York, and has expanded bike lanes, greenways and bike paths

 

New York City Council STATED MEETING - November 10, 2004


New York City Council Stated Meeting Report

Every two weeks the New York City Council meets for its Stated Meeting to introduce and pass legislation. As a regular feature, Searchlight covers these meetings and posts a summary of the bills passed.

STATED MEETING - November 10, 2004

Quote of the Day:
"Last year, when the mayor announced that he wanted to go into the twelve most dangerous schools and help turn those schools around... when the statistics came out months later... it turned out that only one of those twelve was actually among the most dangerous." - City Council Speaker Gifford Miller commenting on the need to better track school crime and violence.

Meeting Summary:
On November 10, the New York City Council passed a package of legislation that it says will improve safety in New York City schools. In recent months, there have been conflicting reports about the severity of school crime.

In the fall of 2003, the United Federation of Teachers reported that the number of criminal incidents against teachers and principals had risen 39 percent and that more than 1,800 students had received transfers to different schools because of concerns over safety. However, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein said a few months later that "there is no indication that there has been any significant increase in incidents."

To try to address the issue, the council passed a bill (Intro 266-A) that requires the Department of Education to make more information about school crimes available to the public. The legislation requires a specific listing of each serious, minor, and criminal instance and requires the city make the data available online, at individual schools, and in the annual reports on each school.

"I have a daughter in the fifth grade and when I looked for middle schools, I could not find crime statistics on the Web," said Councilmember Peter Vallone, Jr. who drafted the bill. "I could find what they had for lunch, but not crime statistics."

The second bill in the package (Intro 322-A) requires the city to give the council a quarterly report on the number of school safety agents assigned to each school.

The third bill (Intro 150-A) requires that by the end of 2006, every school in the city specify if they have security cameras installed, and if not, to explain why they believe they are not needed. Of the 1,300 schools in New York City, only 155 currently have security cameras. The council also allocated $120 million in the 5-year capital budget for new security cameras, which cost approximately $75,000 per school to install.

Some council members argued that money should be spent on upgrading schools, creating smaller classes, and funding other programs rather than buying security cameras.

"Don't put a police officer next to each child," said Councilmember Charles Barron. "Put a computer and textbook next to each child."

The council passed all three bills. (Councilmember Dennis Gallagher voted against the school safety agent reports and Councilmember Charles Barron voted against the security cameras.)

The City Council also gave its approval to a new Marriott Hotel on 125th Street and Park Avenue in Harlem, the first hotel to be built in the area since 1966.

The building - known as Harlem Park - will feature two floors of retail space, five floors of commercial space, 11 floors of residential space, and 12 floors of hotel rooms. The initial plan called for the tower to be 550 feet tall, but after negotiations with the local community board and council members it was reduced by about 100 feet. Proponents say the project will create about 900 jobs.

Harlem Councilmember Bill Perkins opposes the project, arguing that it will dwarf every other building in Harlem and that the residential apartments will sell for $600 per square foot and will not be affordable to locals.

"If it is bad for my district, El Barrio, Harlem, or the Upper West Side... then it is bad for the city," said Perkins.

The Marriott hotel plan passed by a vote of 39 to 7 with one abstention. (Bill Perkins, Letitia James, Robert Jackson, Al Vann, Hiram Monserrate, Eric Dilan, and Charles Barron voted "no;" James Sanders abstained.)

The next Stated Meeting is scheduled for November 23, 2004.

For an archive of past meetings and council votes, visit Gotham Gazette's Searchlight.

 



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