It takes a lot of moxie to build an entertainment complex with two theaters, rehearsal halls and restaurants literally in the shadow of the skyline of Manhattan, the live-performance capital of America. But the center’s directors are betting that New Jerseyites are tired of trekking to Manhattan for an arts fix. They’re also betting that among the 4.5 million people living around Newark, there is a big untapped audience for live entertainment. The program directors have booked a range of talent, from Jessye Norman to the Chieftains, from the Peking Opera to the Urban Bush Women. This is standard fare in the performing-arts centers now popping up in every major American city, but Newark is fine-tuning the mix for its constituency. The first season’s menu is heavy on Portuguese artists because of the large local Portuguese-speaking community. That big-tent spirit is everywhere you look in the building, designed by Barton Myers, starting with the handsome but unpretentious facade and extending to the African tribal designs on the bathroom tiles. Even the construction crews reflected the city’s ethnic mix. They got so caught up in the project that they wore T shirts that read, IF WE BUILD IT THEY WILL COME.
But will they? The rich and the middle class will stay away, say the center’s critics, because they think downtown Newark is a dangerous place. The poor won’t show up because they can’t afford it. Local social activists criticize the project, saying the money would be better spent on housing or schools. In the end, the only thing Newark has going for it is the bizarre fact that performing-arts centers really do seem to jump-start downtown recoveries.
It happened in Cleveland. It happened in Pittsburgh. And if zeal and a considerable amount of savvy are what it takes, it could happen in Newark. Four years before the center opened, its staff was running arts programs in the schools. And to the federal and state contribution of $127 million, local individuals, corporations and foundations added $53 million. But the smartest thing anyone did was hire directors who had the right experience. Before he became the arts center’s CEO, Lawrence Goldman was head of development at Carnegie Hall, where he directed the construction of a high-rise apartment building next door to the hall that kicks in $2 million to $3 million a year to the Carnegie Hall and New York City budgets. Goldman has similar hopes for two parcels of land already owned by the arts center. ““Doesn’t Lincoln Center wish it owned all that land across Broadway?’’ he asks.
In the end, Newark may have had no choice but to build a performing-arts center. As Michael Bayard of the Urban Land Institute, a nonprofit research group in Washington, points out, these days you don’t dare start any civic project without an artistic component: ““It’s a long-term trend–the introduction of entertainment into virtually all forms of land-use development. Everyone is demanding more entertainment.’’ If America’s chief business is entertainment, then Newark, once the nation’s manufacturing capital, could rise again.
