They Told Me Not to Take that Job: Tumult, Betrayal, Heroics, and the Transformation of Lincoln Center (15 page)

Working with the Film Society, the architect David Rockwell designed two new screening rooms, an amphitheater, and a canteen called Indie, to complement the Walter Reade movie house across the street. If there is a better, more inviting spot to view a movie than at the Elinor Bunin Film Center, anywhere, show me the way to it.

What the generous matching grant offer to constituents meant, as a practical matter, was that Lincoln Center, the organization I ran, became the single largest donor to all but one of every participating resident organization on the campus. And for what purpose? To help them realize their highest-priority artistic and educational ambitions.

Now what self-respecting trustee of any organization associated with Lincoln Center would fail to find this total incentive package less than attractive? All we asked for in return was a semblance of civility and a willingness to work long hours in good faith on problem solving and resolving conflict. Implicit in the individual bilateral legal arrangement Lincoln Center negotiated with each of its constituent organizations was an understanding that the project as a whole would be allowed to go forward. The formal veto power inherent in LCDP governing rules would be exercised, if at all, only when absolutely necessary.

In essence, Lincoln Center suggested that the constituents define carefully their vital interests. Informed views on these issues would be taken fully into account in an effort to satisfy and to avoid the casting of any veto. As to marginal interests, opinions really, on matters that were hardly central to an organization’s operation or artistic future, it was informally understood that no veto would be exercised.

This was the formula that propelled us forward. This was the attractive and magnetic force that would eventually woo the “big guys”: the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, and the soon-to-be-christened David H. Koch Theater and its occupants. In time they, too, could not resist cooperating.

And why not? Beyond the benefits enumerated here, there was even more to come.

T
HE DEAL
L
INCOLN
C
ENTER
offered to induce constituent cooperation was extraordinarily generous. It became even more so as detailed negotiations with each resident organization ensued. For the most part, we responded affirmatively to constituent requests supplemental to our already plentiful offer.

Call us magnanimous. Call us eager to please and indulgent. Or call us pushovers.

Our attitude was clear. We had overcome significant resistance and had built important forward momentum. No single supplemental request seemed so excessive as to warrant tediously long negotiations, let alone a project standstill. We did not wish to have our collective progress slowed down, with all of the attendant risks and costs. If pursuing this course of action meant raising even more money, so be it.

When, for example, The Juilliard School contended that its new facade, estimated to cost some $17 million, was really just another form of public space and should therefore be considered the financial responsibility of Lincoln Center, we gulped and then yielded in the interest of moving forward.

Building what is now known as the Claire Tow Theater, a third venue with an audience capacity of 112, to be added to the 1,089-seat Vivian Beaumont Theater and the 297-seat Mitzi Newhouse Theater, was estimated to cost $30 million. In view of Lincoln Center Theater’s cooperation with such features of redevelopment as placing a garage entrance to its immediate east, we departed voluntarily from the 20 percent match formula and offered 50 percent, or $15 million.

The only constituent in favor of building a footbridge across 65th Street was the School of American Ballet (SAB). All others either opposed the idea or were indifferent to it. But the executive director of SAB, Marjorie Van derCook, longed to have an elevated crossing for students to safely cross the street on their way to and from the David H. Koch Theater. This wish was totally supported by her board of directors and by Peter Martins. The sculpturally expressive span that was ultimately put in place pleased everyone. It carried an $8 million price tag, picked up entirely by Lincoln Center.

Concessions were advanced to other constituents as well, above and beyond the standard package of rich incentives.

They all added up. In the end, of the $1.2 billion campuswide capital campaign a total of $790 million was Lincoln Center’s share. Nearly $120 million of it was sent directly to constituents, either in the form of matching their own fund-raising or offsetting their costs directly. Nothing like a financial challenge of this size had ever before been undertaken. Raising this sum during the same eight years in which we required about $40 million in donations
annually
to balance Lincoln Center’s own operating budget increased the total to $1.1 billion as our sole responsibility.

Lincoln Center is not a university with thousands of loyal alumni. Institutions like New York University and Columbia University are fund-raising machines. They no sooner complete one capital campaign than they launch another. They employ hundreds of fund-raisers. They organize by school and by graduating class. They exert all kinds of peer pressure.

Lincoln Center is not a hospital, blessed with grateful patients and their relatives, those who have left their lives in its care or hope for excellent service when they are in need.

In its first-ever massive renovation, everything depended on Lincoln Center meeting its unprecedented fund-raising commitments. Paying our bills on time. Setting an example for constituents who needed to satisfy their own ambitious funding goals. Avoiding reductions in scope or quality of work. Brooking no delays in construction.

Simultaneously, Lincoln Center continued to manage the campus and its annual support to constituents in financially beneficial ways. Each year I prepared an annual report card detailing all of the services provided by Lincoln Center to the constituents, as a group and individually. Leaving aside matching funds associated with redevelopment, in fiscal year 2012 these benefits totaled $12.9 million.
¹

W
HY WAS
I
SO CONFIDENT
that we could climb this fund-raising Mount Everest? Although the goal was daunting and unprecedented, Lincoln Center enjoyed some major advantages.

There was Lincoln Center’s board. By 2008 it had almost doubled in size. It was possessed of considerable net wealth. Its members were
deeply involved in the life of the institution. They were also extremely well connected to pools of capital controlled by corporations, foundations, privately held firms, and individuals of every kind and from every walk of life. Lincoln Center’s board was highly ambitious and strongly motivated.

The trustees would take the lead in giving and getting.
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In its fifty-year history Lincoln Center had never engaged in a comprehensive, campuswide capital campaign. When we approached prospects, corporate and individual, who had never given a donation to Lincoln Center, none could claim that we had worn out our welcome.

Our case was compelling. The need for comprehensive renovation was almost self-evident. The architectural design was stunning. Lincoln Center’s reputation was very strong. Prospects were impressed that in place of divisiveness and turmoil, cooperation and collaboration were now taking hold.

Lincoln Center enjoyed a valuable asset, hiding in plain sight: naming opportunities. We had an abundance of them in our outdoor spaces and our buildings. Unlike colleges and universities, which typically offered high-end donors the chance to have programs, departments, professorships, or even entire schools named after them, Lincoln Center had rarely done so.

Many companies liked the idea of having their multi-million-dollar gifts memorialized by a naming. The Morgan Stanley lobby. The Barclays Grove. The Hearst Plaza. Why not have customers, clients, partners, investors, and employees proudly take notice of company philanthropy? Why not burnish the corporate brand by associating with the visibility and the prestige that Lincoln Center enjoys?

For individuals, naming provided the chance to honor parents, a spouse, a friend, or a highly valued colleague. It is a nice feeling to have children or grandchildren admire your generosity to a place from which they now benefit.

For those not averse to public identification, the attractiveness of Lincoln Center’s redeveloped spaces and our institutional reputation combined to render naming opportunities a valuable campaign offer.

Our appeal went well beyond the content of the performing arts. It highlighted Lincoln Center as an engine of economic development.
As an educator of kids and families. As a source of civic pride and of social cohesion. As a major tourist attraction. As another compelling reason why talented people would be drawn to New York City to live and to work.

The fund-raising pace was relentless. Rarely did a day pass without at least three face-to-face solicitations by members of the group. The chair, Frank Bennack, was fond of observing that any call from him was a collect call. David Rubenstein, the chair of the Capital Campaign, took on hedge funds, private equity, investment firms, and money-centered banks as his principal assignment.

Both men are extraordinary fund-raisers. They believe that a successful sales approach combines biography (their own and that of the prospect) and the cause. Properly briefed with up-to-date research on the potential donor, each was relaxed, focused, and unflappable at meetings. After exchanging pleasantries, inquiring about the state of the prospect’s business, or the condition of the city, or the challenges before the nation, they would ask after members of the family or mutual friends. Bennack and Rubenstein would then state Lincoln Center’s case, personally and compellingly.

Here is a version of Bennack’s pitch:

After the attack on 9/11, I am, as the CEO of Hearst Corporation, exceptionally proud that my company became the very first to announce an intention to erect a new headquarters building here in New York City, one designed by Norman Foster.

We hoped this corporate affirmation about New York’s bright future would be widely emulated. In parallel, as Hearst’s President, I began to think of what I, born and raised in Texas, could personally do to express my thanks to this great town. Giving the matter lots of consideration and entertaining several possibilities, I concluded that being the Chairman of Lincoln Center at this exciting time in its history would be the most important role I could play.

As Lincoln Center approaches its 50th anniversary, the nation’s oldest and the world’s largest and most prominent performing arts center, has planned to reinvest in its physical plant. The design is comprehensive and elegant. It addresses all of the major public space, infrastructure and artistic needs of twelve world class constituents.

Collectively, all of Lincoln Center’s resident organizations spend over $800 million annually. They attract over 5 million Americans and tourists to the campus each year. In addition, more than two thousand full-time students study at the much acclaimed School of American Ballet and The Juilliard School. Nothing of this size, diversity and quality in the performing arts exists in any one place anywhere else.

As a major source of civic pride, an engine of economic development and a center of artistic excellence, we need to raise a total of roughly one billion to get this job done.

New York City is on board with the commitment of $240 million. New York State and the federal government have each pledged $30 million. That leaves in excess of $700 million to be raised privately and we expect the board of directors of Lincoln Center to unanimously participate and to collectively donate the critical mass of that sum.

I am here this morning to ask you to please consider joining me and Hearst with a leadership gift of no less than $10 million.

You will not ever regret being a major part of this rejuvenation of a singular set of institutions. It is early in our campaign. But so far no one has turned us down. Please do not be the first to do so.
³

Bennack’s reputation and relationships with so many prospects were as solid as his rhetorical skills.

When Rubenstein approached prospects, all of them wondered why a guy who lives in Bethesda, Maryland; who cofounded the Carlyle Group, a major private equity firm headquartered in Washington, DC; and was a trustee of the Kennedy Center would be soliciting a mega-gift for Lincoln Center. They paid attention.

Katherine Farley, who took over major fund-raising responsibilities from both Bennack and Rubenstein, was more reluctant to invoke her own biography or to cite her own generosity, both very formidable. But her persuasiveness, charm, sense of humor, and seriousness of purpose yielded impressive results. In the three years that she was the chair of Lincoln Center and I was the president, twenty-five outstanding trustees were added to our board. Virtually all agreed to leadership gifts to the capital campaign ranging from at least $3 million to $5 million and to contribute $250,000 in annual support.

That kind of financial commitment to a single institution is extraordinary. It was clearly and explicitly requested as part of the invitation to join the board of directors, not just orally but in writing. The admired leadership of Farley resulted in a very high acceptance rate. She is as indefatigable and results-driven a leader as any I have ever met.

These top-drawer trustees would grace any nonprofit board. Wooing them to Lincoln Center was not only a boost to our campaign totals; it was also an enduring contribution to strengthening the institution’s governance and influence. It was also very hard work. During Farley’s tenure while I was her partner at Lincoln Center, every six and a half weeks a new trustee agreed to serve. Bennack, Rubenstein, and Farley were joined by about a dozen other active trustee solicitors for the campaign.