By Bill Zeeble, KERA 90.1 reporter
Dallas, TX – Bill Zeeble, KERA 90.1 reporter: On a recent rainy evening, more than 150 dinner guests and four harpists gathered under a tent on the expansive property of Gene and Jerry Jones. Guests were celebrating their own accomplishment - the first fundraising phase for the performing arts center.
Bill Lively, president, CEO, Dallas Center for the Performing Arts Foundation: $105 million in this economy at this time is more than historic. It's just extraordinary.
Zeeble: Bill Lively is the president and CEO of the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts foundation. In an earlier interview, he elaborated on the campaign.
Lively: This project is so worthy and timely that the citizens who've already participated have committed more gift income than was required, would be required to construct the Meyerson in current dollars, the Bass Hall in current dollars or the new Hobby Center in Houston.
Zeeble: In March, the appeal goes public with an outdoor gala event of local artists and performers at the Annette Strauss Artists Square. Headliners will include opera superstar and Lincoln Center arts administrator Beverly Sills. The recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors and Presidential Medal of Freedom, Sills also spoke the other night with the message she'll convey in March.
Beverly Sills, director, Lincoln Center: Art in our lives is not a frill. The best legacy we can pass on to our children and grandchildren is to give them a little beauty in their lives and the opportunity to feel there will be beauty in their lives. This is a rather ugly and difficult world we're living in right now.
Zeeble: The goal over the next several years will be to raise another hundred million dollars from the public, supplemented by about 50 million dollars from a proposed September city bond campaign. The 250 million dollars will build a 24-hundred seat lyric theater for opera, ballet, and other large musical performances. There'll be a smaller 800-seat theater for stage productions. Land has already been purchased in the Dallas arts district near the Meyerson Symphony Center. The big, barn-like Arts District theater will be razed. Proponents of the project, like Bill Lively, say it's about time.
Lively: Dallas is emerging, culturally, growing up culturally. It's deciding that the arts are important to its fabric. If that had been important before, we wouldn't be sitting here talking about a brand new performing arts center. We'd have one. The Meyerson would have been here 50 years ago. It's only 12 years old.
Zeeble: The board chairman for the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts foundation, Harvey Mitchell, agrees with Lively, and believes an expanded arts district will result in more than just some new buildings.
Harvey Mitchell, chairman of the board, Dallas Center for the Performing Arts foundation: We want some restaurants and other life down there. It's so close to the State-Thomas uptown area over there. I think you'll be able to see people walking to the opera or symphony or museum.
Zeeble: Deedie Rose, also on the board, and chair of the architecture search committee, says great cities are about great street life.
Deedie Rose, board member, Dallas Center for the Performing Arts foundation: It doesn't happen underground and it doesn't always happen in buildings. I also believe in the arts to teach us, to inspire us, and to bring us together. So what better place to have street life, to do some urban planning where we get some great street life and where we really develop the heart of a city.
Zeeble: Rose says if the heart of your city is not strong, nothing else is. The two architectural firms chosen to design the theaters are London-based Foster and Partners, and Rem Koolhaas and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam. Rose says they both embraced the mission to design people-friendly structures that are, simultaneously, works of art, and not just something to look at from a distance. For KERA 90.1, I'm Bill Zeeble.