Leader of the PACS

by Jennifer Melick   
Posted December 20, 2007

Ten years after it opened, Newark’s innovative experiment in cultural and urban redevelopment is thriving.

A decade ago, if you arrived at the intersection of Center Street and Park Place in Newark at 7:45 pm, you’d find yourself at an almost deserted spot in a city whose workforce had fled home to the suburbs, and where most residents were inside for the night. By the 1980s, many people had given up on Newark, but Larry Goldman, president and CEO of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, had not. He had a vision to bring people back to the city and their roots.

WATER WORKS: NJPAC aspires to reconnect Newark with its riverfront; below (left to right): “Sounds of the City” free outdoor summer concerts; the New Jersey Symphony; soprano Kathleen Battle on NJPAC’s opening night in 1997; the bustling Prudential Hall lobby; the Newark Boys Chorus.

“Great arts centers and museums belong in great cities,” says Goldman, who joined the fledgling board in 1989. “It has been a huge miscalculation to stick an arts center where two highways cross in the middle of nowhere. It was also very important to be near the Passaic River. The historic beginnings of Newark all emanate from the river, and it was our view that NJPAC, if done properly, could reconnect Newark with its historic riverfront.”

Today, if you visit that same intersection on performance nights, you’ll see thousands of people streaming into NJPAC  and feel the electricity of an exciting urban place. Those who arrive early can stop for dinner at the center’s Theater Square Grill or Calçada, its open-air summer-season restaurant. NJPAC’s inviting facade encourages passersby to look in, and what they see reflects the city itself—a building made of glass, steel, and brick. The programming is meant to pull in everyone from a Short Hills multimillionaire to a young child in the Central Ward of Newark, and it includes everything from Latin jazz dance parties to classical concerts with the New Jersey Symphony.

From the start, NJPAC did things big. On October 18, 1997, then-reigning soprano Kathleen Battle opened the stunning new Prudential Hall with a concert recorded by Great Performances for PBS. So it’s totally in character that the tenth-anniversary festivities started a month early with a free family day featuring the Big Apple Circus and a huge dance party. The celebration continues this month with a glittering gala  headlined by Newark native and fervent supporter Queen Latifah and the New Jersey Symphony.

Big also describes NJPAC’s mission: to bring an array of diverse performers to a broad spectrum of New Jerseyans, reconnecting Newark with the suburbs. If this lofty experiment seemed risky in 1997, NJPAC today can bask in its accomplishments. In fact, cities around the country and from as far away as London and Calgary have sought the advice of NJPAC officials on how to successfully build and run a multifaceted, multicultural arts center.

Unlike Lincoln Center, which is set off from the streets of Manhattan’s Upper West Side on a broad plaza, NJPAC is part of the fabric of downtown Newark. Lincoln Center’s largest concert venue, Avery Fisher Hall, has had to diddle with its problematic acoustics ever since it was built, but NJPAC’s acoustics were exceptional from the outset, with a beautiful and distinctive look once described by Goldman as “like being inside a cello.”

Programming has attracted minority audiences in unprecedented numbers—26 percent of ticket sales, “almost unheard of in this type of a cultural venue,” says Jeff Norman, vice president for public affairs.

Some of its most popular events have been the free “Sounds of the City” outdoor pop and jazz concerts, as well as cabaret evenings in the center’s intimate, 250-seat space (“Our audiences love, love, love cabaret,” says Leon Denmark, NJPAC’s vice president of programming), and Retumba, an annual Three Kings Day Celebration for families. The center has partnered with respected arts organizations including WBGO, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and McCarter Theatre Center.

Through its educational programs, NJPAC has helped kids. Danielle Thompson, now 25 and a graduate of Newark Arts High, is an actress and dancer who attended NJPAC summer youth workshops in her teens. She won an NJPAC/Star-Ledger scholarship (“That was one of the best auditions I’ve ever had—the audition committee was like a big family.”) that allowed her to attend Rutgers’ Mason Gross School of the Arts. Thompson graduated in 2004 and now works as an NJPAC teaching artist in schools to educate on topics like bullying, black history, and women’s history.

In 1986, Governor Tom Kean proposed building a world-class performing arts center. He commissioned a feasibility study to determine where it should be built. Newark was the obvious choice: It’s the state’s largest city, with 4.5 million New Jerseyans living within 25 miles and a transportation system and other infrastructure needed to support an arts center. But there was little public support for a performing arts center in Newark, so Kean relied on Mayor Sharpe James, businessman/philanthropist Ray Chambers, and longtime Star-Ledger editor Mort Pye to help advocate its construction. It turned out that people who grew up in or near Newark had an enormous reservoir of goodwill toward the city. They fondly remembered shopping at Hahne’s and Bamberger’s—even going to late-night burlesque and vaudeville shows—and they wanted to see the city once again hopping at 3 am.

Minority architects were chosen to build the center, and 46 percent of the 1,000 jobs created during construction were filled by minorities or women. One of the center’s objectives has been to achieve diversity not just in programming but also in its workforce and in its audience.

Even if all roads lead to Newark, there have been obstacles en route. It took $300 million to build the center, about two thirds of which came from public funding. Today only 6 percent of the center’s operating budget comes from public sources. Thanks to efforts by NJPAC’s Women’s Association and other fundraisers, the PAC is now about three-fifths of the way to its goal of a $100 million endowment, which should allow arts center management to take greater artistic risks.

Then there is the matter of Newark itself. Many suburban patrons drive to NJPAC, even though there are two nearby train stations, which have been linked to the center by light rail since 2006. Getting New Jerseyans out of their cars is never easy and isn’t helped by NJ Transit’s off-peak operating schedule, where trains on most lines run once an hour. (NJPAC did manage to get Newark’s light rail to operate more frequently near performance time.) For those who do arrive via public transportation, the five-minute walk from Penn Station to NJPAC presents few inviting street-level retail businesses. Instead, one passes windowless, fortress-like office buildings—designed in the wake of the 1967 riots to give a greater feeling of security. The scarcity of shops and restaurants in NJPAC’s immediate vicinity—its lack of a “coolness” factor—is certainly one reason only about 12 percent of its audience come from Manhattan.

Newark is a long way from being a 24/7 entertainment and business district. Still, with numerous downtown residential projects in the works, and the opening of the Pru Center this month, the neighborhood is set for an upswing. NJPAC expects to contribute to that revival by building a high-rise with about 250 apartments or condominiums on twelve acres it owns near the concert hall. Retail stores and restaurants will line the base. Ownership of that building and others should help offset the center’s operating expenses. Bookstores, art galleries, and other shops would give audiences a reason to arrive early and actually spend time in Newark.

Goldman acknowledges the limits of what an arts center can do. “Homelessness, poverty, broken families, drug addiction, poor health, and hunger are deeply rooted, complex societal problems over which arts centers have very little influence,” he says. “All of those problems have to be attacked frontally if we are to call ourselves a civilized society. Having said that, it is crucially important that cities have the kinds of anchor institutions that represent hope and beauty and the highest level of human accomplishment—institutions that inspire creativity and aspirations for young people. It’s not an either/or situation.”