They Told Me Not to Take that Job: Tumult, Betrayal, Heroics, and the Transformation of Lincoln Center (17 page)

Periodically, Brodsky would call and prod me to launch a Josie Robertson Plaza working group. He envisioned something not unlike the 65th Street working group that had been skillfully navigated by Bruce Kovner. I smiled. Not long ago Kovner’s group was referred to by many of Brodsky’s colleagues dismissively. Clearly things had changed. A number of former skeptics and cynics on the campus now believed that redevelopment was real. And by then Barry Friedberg, a former senior investment banker at Merrill Lynch, had been named Solomon’s successor as the chair of the board of the New York City Ballet. Appointed in the middle of 2003, his tenure ran for a five-year period. Friedberg took a much more open and flexible view of redevelopment, understanding its many potential advantages. No doubt Brodsky was calling with Friedberg’s encouragement.

At Lincoln Center, we were very busy. We had to fully realize a $400 million design. We needed to engage daily the city, state, and federal governments and comply with their rules and regulations in bidding and construction. We needed to manage engineering, acoustical, and construction firms and their suppliers. Most of all, we needed to be out and about, meeting prospects and raising money.

I told Brodsky of my concern about being distracted by constituents who had not thought through what they really wanted and who did not have a track record of playing well with others. I urged him to
talk with his colleagues directly in an effort to assure me that all were now serious and prepared for reasoned discourse. I explained that I did not wish to be diverted from the huge undertaking of completing 65th Street successfully while engaged in some kind of fool’s errand or major detour. Besides, I thought that playing just a little hard to get might provide Lincoln Center with some psychological leverage. Hopefully, Brodsky would prevail on his colleagues to cooperate.

By and large, he and they did so. With the concurrence of Frank Bennack, we asked Brodsky to chair the Josie Robertson Plaza group. The Lincoln Center board offered its blessing. To his enormous credit, Dan guided discussion with tact, patience, and finesse. We began in late 2006 and early 2007 by working through lots of options presented by Liz Diller to replace the fountain. After examining many ideas, we all concluded that our patrons, New Yorkers, and tourists generally liked the current placement of the fountain right smack in the middle of the plaza.

That is where Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder cavort in the film
The Producers
. It is where Cher in
Moonstruck
waits, decked out and gorgeous, looking for Nicolas Cage, the brother of her fiancé. Magic ensues. And it is where in
Ghostbusters
Bill Murray meets Sigourney Weaver after her cello rehearsal. Murray flatters her. “You were the best in your row,” he fawns. With some trepidation, he asks her out on a date. When she accepts, Murray celebrates in a twirling dance. These are examples of how the Lincoln Center fountain is fondly remembered. As the site of love affairs, graduations, engagements, and marriages. Not one known divorce.

From our collective point of view, the frequently used phrase, “Meet me at the fountain,” meant getting together at the existing location. So we asked D S + R to put aside their other imaginative but somewhat impractical and less popular designs. Instead, we suggested that the firm propose an intervention to replace the existing fifty-year-old structure with a modern revision. What they delivered astonished us.

A lighter, more transparent, more open fountain. Lit from underneath during the evening, it seemed to many like a flying saucer about to experience liftoff. Opened up, it allowed water to flow to the edges and invited visitors to move closer. Its disc shape welcomed those who wished to sit facing either the plaza or the fountain itself. What also
drew attention was the collaboration of D S + R with Wet Design, the firm that specializes in the mechanics of water flow. Perhaps its best-known work is the Bellagio Fountain in Las Vegas.
⁶

We made clear to Wet Design and to Liz that while we did not regard water displays as an art form, let alone a thirteenth constituent, a little fun in the form of fountain choreography would be welcome. The smiling faces of children and their parents as the fountain was put through its tricks, controlled by sophisticated software and intricate mechanics, testify to its success. As does the sheer number of photographers who show up at all hours to take photos, with or without human subjects in the foreground. Next to the Trevi in Rome, I do not know of a water fountain that attracts more donations of coins.

Having divined an elegant solution for the center of Josie Robertson Plaza, Liz Diller and her team now focused their attention on one of the knottiest and annoying design challenges before us.

At the very front of Lincoln Center was an inner roadway, a drop-off point for ticketholders arriving by limousine, black car, or taxi. These vehicles cut across pedestrians also making their way to Avery Fisher Hall, the New York State Theater, the Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center Theater, or Damrosch Park. I was fond of observing in speeches that if you successfully traversed nine lanes of traffic crossing Broadway and Columbus Avenue on your way to an event, Lincoln Center would reward you with one more opportunity to be hit by some kind of moving vehicle!

What D S + R conceived of was a subterranean drop-off location, one that would allow the main entrance to Lincoln Center to become a true pedestrian plaza. Diller and company seemed to stretch the plaza forward, creating a longer, more gracious entryway featuring elongated risers. As one ascended, the fountain and the classic monumental trio of venues suddenly came into view. They acquired a remarkable, welcoming quality. The arrival at Lincoln Center had become ceremonial, an early indicator that a very special and memorable experience was in store.

Across the back of each riser in the Grand Staircase is a self-contained mini-marquee with LED lighting that displays words of welcome, of coming attractions, and of special significance: the mention of a gala and its honoree, the greeting of a dignitary, the announcement of a birthday or an anniversary, and the like. This feature of the grand
entryway caused much concern. Could it be maintained in New York City’s notoriously cold and windy climate? Could the text of messages be seen on a hazy or foggy day? How would the software operate, and was this technology and its maintenance affordable? The creation of careful prototypes actually tested in all kinds of inclement weather and the explanations of geekish, high-tech experts convinced us to give this design feature the go-ahead.

The Grand Staircase scheme proved to be extremely popular. Everyone, it seems, loves to see their name up in lights.

To the left and right of the plaza, D S + R designed stunning glass canopies with entrances astride the stairs that are gentle and sloping. There are also easily accessible ramps complete with banisters to steady one’s step, if needed. They allow theatergoers to arrive most of the time virtually unaffected by the elements.

And down below in the subterranean drop-off, escalators take patrons up to the plaza level and theater entrances totally protected from weather. This is part of a larger underground plan that allows for patron access to and from the subway, along passageways that are entirely refinished and pleasant to walk. So much so that all day long students, Upper West Side residents, and commuters who park their cars at Lincoln Center on the way to work or to shopping regularly use these concourses. They voted yes to this design—with their feet.

When Liz Diller first showed this proposed solution to the assembled constituents and Dan Brodsky asked for reactions, something unique happened in my experience at Lincoln Center. There was stunned silence, followed by acclamation. It was an aha! moment for everyone.

Praise then erupted from all parts of the room. Dan Brodsky noticed that Peter Martins was about to make his exit and that he had not yet spoken.

“Peter, before you leave, what’s your opinion of all of this?”

“I am very impressed with all of these solutions to knotty problems. If we can realize this design, Lincoln Center will be much improved and we will take great pride in the result.
But who in heaven’s name is going to raise the kind of money required for this elegant, but I am sure, very, very expensive plan?
”

All eyes turned to me.

CHAPTER 5

Rejuvenation

                
They all laughed at Christopher Columbus

                
When he said the world was round

                
They all laughed when Edison

                
Recorded sound

                
They all laughed at Wilbur and his brother

                
When they said a man could fly

                
They told Marconi

                
That wireless was a phony

                
It’s the same old cry

                
They all laughed at Rockefeller Center

                
Now they’re fighting to get in . . .

                
Who’s got the last laugh now[?]

                    
—“They All Laughed,” composed by George Gershwin, with lyrics by Ira Gershwin

                
Before
you do it, it’s inconceivable.

                
After
you do it, they wonder what all the fuss is about.

                    
—ANONYMOUS

I
n 2008 I completed and had published a book entitled
Yours for the Asking: An Indispensable Guide to Fundraising and Management
.
¹
I wrote it to help others bridge the gap between the promise of the non-profit organizations to which they were devoted and their performance.
Often the successful solicitation of funds made all the difference in realizing their goals.

To my surprise, the most quoted lines in the book, read to me word for word in astonishment by a moderator or a television or radio personality, are these: “Let me begin with a confession. I like raising money. I like everything about it.”

Naturally, I took Peter Martins’s exit line as a personal challenge. After all, no one else at Lincoln Center had pledged to take the lead in raising anything approaching $800 million, certainly not utilizing such funds to help realize the goals of their artistic neighbors or the needs of the general public. The other $400 million, more or less, is what the constituents set as their collective goal for new or renovated artistic facilities and for endowment.

Fund-raising took place virtually nonstop except for the interregnum after the Lehman Brothers collapse. It was both fun and exhausting. Figuring out what interested and motivated donors, who at Lincoln Center should best pop the question, and when and how much to request involved both solid research and well-organized consultations with experienced volunteer solicitors. While many donors shunned publicity, or even mention of themselves, there were some prospects for whom the size of their names etched on a building, or typed out in text, mattered a great deal. The larger, the better. Others truly cared about the amount of time their names appeared in a scrolling format on-screen. The longer, the better. In these minority of cases we found ourselves soliciting less and negotiating more.

We kept our spirits up, reminding ourselves how much rejection builds character. We could ask, short form or long. We became pretty adept at the elevator or bumper sticker pitch if that’s all that time permitted. When prospects cared most about the company they would be keeping if they responded to our plea affirmatively, we focused not on the cause, or on naming opportunities, but on who had already given, names hopefully familiar to our target of opportunity. And we made ourselves available wherever and whenever an existing or future donor wished—evenings, weekends, early breakfasts, vacation homes. We aimed to please.

By the time I left Lincoln Center at the end of January 2014, more than one hundred sources—individuals, corporations, and foundations—had
pledged $1 million or more, twenty-two had donated $3 million and above, twenty-one $5 million and above, twelve $10 million and above, and seven $20 million and above. Because this campaign was broad-based and not top-heavy, we had achieved one of our most important objectives. The idea was always for us to leave Lincoln Center, after completing a successful campaign, with a wider pool of donors, contributing more on an annual basis than had been the case when we began.