Gehry-Designed Signature Center Gets $25 Million from City

Site of the future Signature Center

During planning for the Ground Zero redevelopment, the Signature Theatre, which devotes an entire season of productions to one playwright, was to have been one of the anchor arts organizations at the WTC site. That idea was nixed in 2007, and now the company, whose lease at 555 West 42nd Street expires in 2001, has finally settled on a new home. Today the Bloomberg administration announced a $25 million contribution to the project, part of an $800 million, 59-story, residential building and hotel on 42nd Street and 10th Avenue being built by Related Companies.

The Signature Center is being designed by Frank Gehry, and the rest of the complex, which will be built to LEED Silver standards, will be the work of Arquitectonica and Ismael Leyva. According to the mayor's office, the building will provide more than 800 new housing units, including more than 160 intended for low-income families. The performing arts center will feature three intimate and distinct theatres, rehearsal studios, a café, bookstore and administrative offices, and will allow Signature to more than double its audience, with anticipated attendance of more than 80,000. That's expected to open in 2012, while the apartment/hotel complex is slated to be finished in 2011.

Signature will celebrate its 20th anniversary next year by presenting a season of works by Tony Kushner, including the first New York revival of Angels in America since its Broadway debut. According to the press release, the Signature Center will ultimately run three programs: the continuation of the Master Playwright Residency, which explores the works of playwrights with major bodies of work; the expansion of the Legacy Program, which celebrates the lifetime achievements of the artists who have previously worked at Signature; and the introduction of a new Emerging Playwrights Residency.

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By John Del Signore in News on December 22, 2009 5:08 PM

Comments [rss]

Snoopy

To comment on great architecture and the architects that create such, witness FLW's Falling Water. Massive problems with it along with Mies glass house, Pei's John Hancock Tower, etc. Architects for the most have a problem knowing if you should turn a screw clockwise or counter clockwise to tighten it. But at the same time they think they are solving the world's problems through their ingenuous ideas.

Snoopy

Why is it that the name Related comes up all the time in these "schemes?" Aren't there other developers around?

Snoopy

"whose lease at 555 West 42nd Street expires in 2001"?

If I was the leasee I would stay with the current situation. If the landlord doesn't realize that this is 2009, he wouldn't know if I decided to stay at the 1994 rent or increase it to the 2001 level.

longacre

Why are they getting city money for this?

ides_of_march

Everything Gehry designs looks like a space age scrap metal yard. I wouldn't pay 25 cents for it.

longacre

Gehry's weird shapes also create some unusuable rooms and indoor spaces, which wouldn't seem to be ideal in a neighborood where land can cost thousands of dollars per inch.

NannyState

Gehry has had hits and misses. Bilbao and Disney Hall were hits, Atlantic Yards was a huge miss and Bleeker Place is sort of in-between. On the whole, Gehry gets better below the 10 story level.

ides_of_march

The walls of the Bilbao museum rusted through in parts within just a few years I seem to recall. I will admit a certain bias against modern architecture. I find it cold and sterile.