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Jan. 25--An architect who says he's concerned about "the soul and the spirit" of the city has been selected to design a performing-arts center for downtown Orlando.
At a news conference this morning, leaders of the Orlando Performing Arts Center intend to announce their choice of Barton Myers Associates as architect and the New York firm Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn Architects as the proposed project's master planner.
Myers -- a Los Angeles-based architect who has designed performing-arts centers in Newark, N.J.; Portland, Ore.; and Cerritos, Calif. -- is known as an architect who avoids designing flashy structures that stand out from the landscape, such as Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Instead, Myers wants his work to fit in with -- and add to -- the cityscape around it.
EEK's projects have included Battery Park City in New York and the Hollywood & Highland commercial and entertainment complex in Hollywood, Calif. The architectural and planning firm will identify other potential uses for the OPAC site, including residential, retail, educational and office facilities.
The two companies were endorsed by Hines, the Houston real-estate company hired in September by OPAC leaders to develop the project, which does not yet have funding. Selection of the architects is the latest in a decadeslong attempt to bring a performing-arts center to Orlando. Mayors Buddy Dyer of Orlando and Rich Crotty of Orange County resurrected the effort in 2004, after several similar ventures died during the past 20 years.
The city behind the building
Jim Pugh, the Winter Park developer who heads the nonprofit group trying to build Orlando's performing-arts center, said his group selected Myers because "he gets it."
"He's a great architect in the sense of creating buildings," Pugh said. "But most important, he understands what a community arts center is supposed to be."
"I love cities, and I see the city through the context of art," Myers said. "A lot of contemporary architects are too interested in the building as an object and not in how the building interacts with other buildings to make the place better."
Eckstut and his associates have not yet spent much time in downtown Orlando, he said, but they're interested in its "smaller-scale charm."
"We're more interested in the Orlandoan's experience than in the visitor's experience," he said. "We want something that can fit into downtown streets and complement what's there."
The idea behind the Orlando center, as Pugh is fond of saying, is that it should appeal not only to "the black-tie crowd" but also to "run-of-the-mill people" who would attend a wide variety of events there. He contrasts the kind of center his group favors with the old-style performing-arts temple typified by the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., or Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City.
"We're talking about a kind of center where you don't have to walk up to it, that would be on street level, with lots of glass and openness that feels very welcome," Pugh said.
Taking cue from New Jersey?
While EEK is relatively unknown to those following Orlando's performing-arts-center project, the selection of Myers came as little surprise. Pugh and others shepherding the enterprise have visited arts centers around the world. Chief among the complexes they favored has been the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, a Myers project that opened to great acclaim in 1997.
OPAC also has used Lawrence Goldman, the Newark center's president, as a frequent consultant on the project here.
Newark's arts center has been credited for reviving that city's moribund downtown, and OPAC leaders hope to copy its plans for combining an arts center with commercial space and housing. But some observers have said Newark has little in common with Orlando, that what works in the New York area may not work here and that Myers' designs are not eye-catching enough to create a sense of excitement in Orlando.
"Barton Myers has certainly created some serviceable spaces," said Margot Knight, a former OPAC board member who heads United Arts of Central Florida. Knight said that Myers' "imaginative" design for the Cerritos arts center -- in which one large hall can be transformed into half a dozen different configurations -- was well-suited to the needs of that small suburban town.
"I hope he can do the same for us," she said.
Rita Bornstein, the former Rollins College president who is an OPAC board member, said she isn't familiar with Myers' work but that her major goal is to have "a place of distinction" for the performing arts.
"I hope the selection will enable that to happen," Bornstein said. "I think Orlando has one last chance right now to make a beautiful downtown area that will take the breath away. Downtown is in need of some gorgeous, interesting, distinctive architecture."
Building a sense of place
Yet Myers said that he, unlike some other architects, is less interested in designing "buildings as icons" than in creating a complex that seems to grow out of its place.
"We want to make Orlando an icon," he said. "I hope we'll find something that is all about Orlando and Florida, that will feel like it's always been there. It's not some spaceship that landed, that might take off any day."
Myers said he favors projects in which the arts create a sense of excitement in cities, and that that is what OPAC is trying to do.
"Theaters and the arts work best in urban situations," he said.
"Orlando is so fortunate in that the city has put together almost 10 acres," he said, referring to the preferred site across Orange Avenue from City Hall. "They have that land. If one can visualize the City Hall, the offices and hotels and some sort of new place featuring the arts, education, government and business, Orlando could be very special. I don't know of an example like that anyplace in the U.S. that could bring it together any better than that."
By the end of March, proponents of the center intend to present a plan to the two mayors attempting to prove that the project can be funded and sustained. It's unclear whether the University of Central Florida, originally a partner with the two governmental entities, will drop out of the undertaking, as President John Hitt indicated last fall.
Elizabeth Maupin can be reached at emaupin@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5426.
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