As Merger With Carnegie Crumbles, City Center Will Delay Its Renovation

Fall for Dance, a fine, inexpensive minifestival that has become a seasonal treasure, will occupy the stage of City Center, starting on Sept. 26. But it was not supposed to this year.

City Center had planned to close for the season, as part of a $150 million renovation in partnership with Carnegie Hall, until the partnership fell apart eight months ago. Carnegie and City Center have abandoned plans to create a new board to oversee joint artistic offerings and the renovation. It is the second crumbled merger in recent years for Carnegie, which scrapped plans in 2003 to join forces with the New York Philharmonic.

Nevertheless, Carnegie and City Center, separated by West 56th Street, said this week that they planned to forge ahead with joint programs, beginning next fall. They said that no specific plans had been established.

But Clive Gillinson, Carnegies executive and artistic director, said that City Center would take part in a major festival being planned for the 2008-9 season. Uncertainty over City Centers renovation has made it difficult to put together joint programs, he said.

City Centers president, Arlene Shuler, minimized the changes, which she noted were first made public eight months ago.

The programming was really always at the heart of what we wanted to do together, she said.

The institutions had announced their relationship with seeming hyperbole in December 2005.

They promised that the joint effort would dramatically expand the scope and depth of artistic and educational programs and exponentially enhance services to performers, audiences, students and children. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Gov. Eliot Spitzer, then the New York state attorney general, weighed in with glowing praise, and leaders of other arts institutions reacted positively.

The new board was to have had 25 members drawn from the existing boards of both places, as well as outsiders. Sanford I. Weill, the former Citigroup chairman and chief executive known for merger-mindedness, was to have been its chairman. He is chairman of Carnegie Hall and was a supporter of the failed Philharmonic merger.

The first task of the partnership was to have been a major renovation of City Center, including a new state-of-the-art performance hall for dance and theater complementary to Carnegie Hall and space for education programs.

But in January, Carnegie and City Center backtracked with a news release titled Carnegie Hall and New York City Center Finalize Strategic Programming Partnership. It began by saying that the boards of the two organizations had approved details of their strategic programming partnership, focused primarily on artistic collaborations, before going on to mention that City Center would do its own fund-raising for the renovation and that there would be no new board. There was little explanation.

City Center is more a rental hall, with ample programming ambition. Carnegie, with its history and large donor base, is just as much a presenter of works as a rental space and has in the past turned up its nose a bit at its neighbor.

At the time, the deal appeared to give City Center access to the donors and fund-raising potential of Carnegie for its long-desired renovation, and to give Carnegie access to City Centers stage for theater and dance performances.

When interviewed this week, Mr. Gillinson, speaking from London, said that in the year after the initial announcement, Carnegie had decided that City Centers space would not be suitable for expanded education. This determination contributed to its recent decision to take over studios rented by individuals and businesses in its own building.

We explored the education side and ended up with the view that it simply didnt work, Mr. Gillinson said.

He also said that a full-blown artistic partnership with City Center grew less compelling to Carnegie when Carnegie discovered that other institutions in New York were willing to go arm in arm with it.

We all agreed that it was no longer a relevant way to go forward, in terms of a big partnership, he said. It was a completely mutual agreement.

Mr. Gillinson said that the initial announcement had been made before the details were worked out. We thought it was better to go public and be up-front about it rather than let it leak out, he said. He added that he felt no embarrassment about the backtracking.

We looked at what works and doesnt work, he said, and this is what works.

Ms. Shuler echoed his point about the precipitate announcement. We were exploring, and we thought it was better to be open about it, she said. No one wants information to get out potentially incorrectly.

City Centers renovation now appears to be on hold, but plans are being examined. We are not ready to make an announcement yet, Ms. Shuler said.

The breakdown is reminiscent of the effort to merge the Philharmonic and Carnegie in 2003, which was undermined by disputes over control of the stage and a failure to alert board members of the merger. In 2005 Carnegie stressed that its trustees and those of City Center fully approved of the partnership.

New York City owns the real estate of both institutions. Kate D. Levin, the cultural affairs commissioner, said that both sides had concluded that the more formal partnership was too much of a headache.

The fundamental impulse here was about programming, she added. There was a realization that they wanted to focus energy on exploring the programming and not spend the huge amount of energy it would take on a merged governance structure.

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