They Told Me Not to Take that Job: Tumult, Betrayal, Heroics, and the Transformation of Lincoln Center (43 page)

At Lincoln Center, to accomplish some goals, one needs a willing and able partner. For more than half of my tenure, when the matter at hand involved committing to the transformation of the auditorium in Avery Fisher Hall, I could be excused for doubting that the New York Philharmonic was either willing or in the least prepared to be that partner.

For roughly the last third of my tenure, the orchestra appeared to be more than willing. Their key leaders actually seemed to be preparing for a major venue overhaul and all that it would entail. How would the
New York Philharmonic’s share of the capital funds be raised? How would it reduce or eliminate its persistent operating deficits, enhance its endowment, and fix its pension fund liability? Where would it perform for the two years that the auditorium in Avery Fisher Hall would be closed? Could it proceed in a way that would protect its subscriber and single ticket holder base during that period? It took time for the New York Philharmonic to grapple with these questions. For those of us engaged in planning for the future of the auditorium with the New York Philharmonic since 2002, it was exasperating to watch the slow-motion progress. When it came to redevelopment, the orchestra seemed to play only in adagio.

And yet I left the premises with some reason to be hopeful. An active committee of the New York Philharmonic and Lincoln Center trustees, staff, and musicians, chaired by the developer Philip Milstein, had been working constructively for the last year and a half of my tenure. Certainly Katherine Farley regarded this huge project as a very high priority. A theater designer and an acoustician had been selected by unanimous agreement after the conclusion of a competitive process, and all looked forward to the selection of a design architect and to detailed campaign planning as the next steps.

I had hoped for more. But the proverbial shovel remained in storage. And it was premature for me to solicit that mega-gift. Time ran out on me.

On Friday, November 14, 2014, Lincoln Center publicly announced that it had successfully negotiated an agreement with the Fisher family. In exchange for a payment of $15 million and a promise of featuring tributes to Avery Fisher in the new lobby of a modernized concert hall, the family agreed to have its name removed from the building.

Now Lincoln Center is free to seek a new, generous benefactor, not only for the overall hall, but also for the transformed auditorium inside of it. Other pertinent facts were disclosed. This comprehensive design and construction project was expected to cost in the vicinity of $500 million. Akustiks had been chosen as the acoustics firm and Fisher-Dachs Associates as the theater designer, with the design architect to be selected in the following months. Both the New York Philharmonic and Lincoln Center agreed that the reconstruction would begin in 2019.

Lincoln Center was well on its way to answering the six key questions any potential mega-donor might ask: Who? What? Why? When? How? At what cost? Lincoln Center was now in a position not only to reply, but to ask prospects a question of its own: Will you join us by offering a nine-figure gift in exchange for a singular, signature naming opportunity?

Speaking for the family, Nancy Fisher was quoted in the
New York Times
on this auspicious day about the family’s motivation: “I watched as the campus started to change. It invited the public in, it didn’t look so forbidding and formal anymore. [By contrast, Avery Fisher] Hall was like an old slipper. How could you avoid sensing that?”

If there was any lingering doubt about Lincoln Center’s resolve, the concrete action steps and timetable that had been announced conveyed Katherine Farley’s and the Lincoln Center board’s clear intent.

Only one month later, the New York Philharmonic announced that Oscar Schafer, the chairman of Rivulet Capital, a private investment firm, would succeed Gary Parr as the chair of the board of directors.
New York Times
reporter Michael Cooper described Schafer as being enthusiastic about realizing a new home for the resident orchestra of what was once called Avery Fisher Hall.

Then, on February 6, 2015, in a startling development, Alan Gilbert announced that he will step down as the music director of the New York Philharmonic when his contract expires in 2017. Suddenly, the “who” became an open question.

Who shall lead an august orchestra is always a weighty and consequential decision. In this case, the identity of Gilbert’s successor will be portentous. Will the board’s search committee recommend a civic leader who appreciates New York City and who understands the urgent desirability of replacing Avery Fisher Hall, after so much delay and so many false starts? Will it choose a musical leader with a flair for performing superbly not just the warhorses of the repertory, but the work of living composers as well? Will it choose an energetic and ambitious leader who recognizes the opportunity to shape the future of one of the world’s leading orchestras? Key decisions beckon.

How quickly can the new conductor take hold? Less than two years after Gilbert’s replacement is identified and on board, the orchestra is scheduled to vacate its home to allow for demolition and construction.
Under the best of circumstances, leaving its historic venue for two seasons and keeping an audience with you is a daunting challenge. The new music director will need to accomplish that feat, assist in closing the orchestra’s persistent operating deficits and help raise charitable contributions in unprecedented sums. A very tall order.

The gift of a world-class venue will be worth all of the work and sacrifice required to design, construct, and pay for it. Having demonstrated that Lincoln Center and seven other constituents could raise $1.2 billion in a collective capital campaign, above and beyond the formidable donated sums needed for annual operations, the positive mood of trustee leaders would be fully justified. And not just by a successful Lincoln Center comprehensive capital campaign track record, but also by the economic climate, especially for fund-raising.

When President Bill Clinton was inaugurated in 1993, the Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at 3200. When President Barack Obama was sworn into office for his first term in 2009, that figure had risen to 7200. In the third year of Obama’s second term it exceeded 18,000.

Fortunate New Yorkers have increased their net wealth inordinately. Investors, financial intermediaries like hedge funds, private equity funds, and investment advisory firms are faring well. Commercial and residential real estate developers are in the money. Property values are at record highs. So is the mood of many wealthy people. And why not? For a wide swath of our town, the joint is jumping financially. The so-called 1 percent has never had it so good in New York City and around the nation.

Fund-raising conditions will not always be so favorable. Seize the day. For bold ideas, breathtaking designs, demonstrations of solidarity between Lincoln Center and the New York Philharmonic, the funds are there. For the asking.

Should the key players from both organizations hear sounds in the distance, it’s just me, cheering them on.

I
FOUND IT DIFFICULT
to believe that I had served as the president of Lincoln Center for 22 percent of its entire life as an organization.

The Mercury, clocking in at 185,000 miles of travel, had certainly been driven beyond its useful life. I was stubborn about keeping it. Liz was genuinely concerned. She didn’t think it was safe to drive any
longer. But like that old favorite sweatshirt and that now thirty-three-year-old raincoat I had purchased in an outdoor flea market in Florence on our honeymoon, I just could not bring myself to give it up.

I had come to believe that my tap-dancing dad was with me whenever I got behind the wheel. I missed him very much. A beat-up old car was a poor substitute for his palpable presence. But better than nothing.

Yet even I eventually came around to admitting that its time had come. In Riverdale, it was not uncommon for homeowners to keep old oil storage tanks buried in their yards. New York City regulation required that they be filled with sand or removed entirely. Liz had long wanted ours hauled away in anticipation of an eventual sale of our home.

Well, as luck would have it, the tank and the car were roughly the same size. Why not, I proposed, bury the car under the front lawn where the tank had been as a lasting tribute to Dad? The look I received from my dear wife was indescribable. I tried a compromise: “Okay, okay. Then why don’t we just cremate it? I can leave an urn of some kind in my study as a reminder of the decade-plus experience with Dad’s car and as a remembrance of him.”

The verdict? Macabre.

Instead, I settled for writing a note to the next owner, imploring him or her to take care of this relic, as if it were a pet collie being left to a new home. Bidding the Mercury good-bye on a trade-in was not easy. I had not been inside a dealer’s showroom for at least a dozen years. I was very rusty. So I turned to the latest special
Consumer Reports
issue on cars. Following its advice, I bought the highly recommended family car, a 2012 Honda.

On Friday, January 31, 2014, I drove the by now two-year-old Honda out of the Lincoln Center garage onto Amsterdam Avenue. There was no longer a vehicular egress onto 65th Street, much to the relief of pedestrians.

I drove north, hanging a left at 71st Street, to West End Avenue. Traffic on the West Side Highway looked smooth. I then turned left onto 72nd Street and, driving past several dozen formidable condominium, co-op, and rental apartments to the south that did not exist in 2002 when I started at Lincoln Center, made my way home in less than fifteen minutes.

Almost thirteen years had passed. It is estimated that during that short span of time, as many as ten thousand additional residents had found a new home within walking distance of Lincoln Center. America’s first and oldest performing arts center had been transformed. So had I.

Chief executive officers are often judged by what transpired during their tenure. That’s fine as far as it goes. But they should also be evaluated by institutional accomplishment after their departure. Did they build enduring value? Did they leave behind a foundation for sustained success?

In my case, the 92nd Street Y never returned to its forlorn status as a rather underutilized, undercapitalized, neighborhood community center, largely confined in influence to its Upper East Side location. Its reputation and its services continued to grow.

The International Rescue Committee was no longer hemorrhaging cash and in danger of breakdown and dissolution. After almost six years of nonstop professional management and leadership, I left a solid track record on which my successor, George Rupp, the former president of Columbia University, could build. That he did. Today the IRC is larger—in size, in impact, in influence, and in stature—than ever before in its storied history. The excellent staff and trustees recruited during my tenure and the unprecedented private and public financial support that was raised were assets that George could and did enjoy and significantly enlarge.

To witness institutions and causes flourishing after you have left them is like observing a child moving from a state of dependence to one of liberation. Little is more pleasurable.

Driving home, I imagine that Mercury completely overhauled and refinished, its now proud owner offering it a new life.

My reverie also envisages Lincoln Center thriving long after I have left the stage.

CHAPTER 13

Futures: The Third Sector’s and My Own

                
They say eyes clear with age,

                
As dew clarifies air

                
To sharpen evenings,

                
As if time put an edge

                
Round the last shape of things

                
To show them there;

                
The many-levelled trees,

                
The long soft tides of grass

                
Wrinkling away the gold

                
Wind-ridden waves—all these,

                
They say, come back to focus

                
As we grow old.

                    
—PHILIP LARKIN,
Long Sight in Age
, 1955

A
fter I left Lincoln Center, Liz and I deferred taking a vacation in the interest of enjoying our first grandchild, who had just been born, and of giving whatever help we could to the new parents, Emily Feinstein, our daughter, and Eric Olney, our son-in-law. They named their child Colette Elyse Olney. Given Colette’s initials, CEO, I’m quite sure that Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook and the author of the
best-selling manifesto for female aspiration and achievement,
Leaning In
, would have no cause for complaint.