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Our Potemkin Village on the Parkway
The New Barnes: Our Potemkin Village (2nd comment)
Robert Zaller
A few months ago, I ran into my Main Line neighbor, the Barnes Foundation president Derek Gillman, who assured me that the new Barnes site on the Parkway would break ground this fall. I must confess that I received this news with much the same skepticism I’ve harbored toward other pronouncements from Barnes spokespersons over the years.
Let us recall that the downtown Barnes was originally scheduled to be fully open for business in 2007. That date came and went with no more accomplished than the hiring of architects who offered no plan, and promissory notes yet to be collected.
There’s still no plan, and no money up-front. At this rate, Michelangelo would yet be painting the Sistine Chapel. What is up is a fence around the prime section of Philadelphia real estate that city fathers have let to the Barnes Foundation for the munificent sum of $10 a year. The fence itself is concealed by a long swath of boarding that announces the coming of Renoir & Friends to Center City, but whose real purpose is to mask the absence of a genuine construction site.
That, too, was the purpose of the groundbreaking ceremony on October 15, in which no ground was actually broken or even touched, but only a couple of whacks taken at the sad, dilapidated, and now vandalized Youth Detention Center that (minus the two statues removed from in front of it some months ago) still occupies the site.
A few whacks and some feeble fireworks
Your correspondent was present for the event, although not invited to participate in it. I personally greeted Ed Rendell, Philadelphia’s permanent mayor; Michael Nutter, his current body double; and other dignitaries. Many people stood around under a tent. A few remarks were made. The aforesaid whacks were taken. Some feeble fireworks went up. That was the sum and substance, for all one could see, of four years’ worth of building the new Barnes.
The new scheduled opening date is 2011.
Let’s do some math—the new math of Philadelphia’s economy, and of Pennsylvania’s. Temporary relocation of the Youth Detention Center to East Falls is a $10 million item, not to mention the goodies promised to ease the NIMBY qualms of residents there. The new Center itself will cost $50 million, or maybe much more. Pennsylvania taxpayers are already on the hook for $187 million in costs for the new Barnes, including $80 million paid or payable for projects at Lincoln University, not at last sighting a part of Greater Philadelphia. There’s another $100 million-plus yet to be poneyed up in private, tax-deductible donations-- revenues that won’t flow into state or city coffers, and won’t go to desperately underfunded local arts and education programs.
There are the unassessed costs to the city of maintaining the new Barnes, including the revenues foregone from commercial development of the Parkway property, and the annual best-case operating deficit of $4.5 million officially offered in court. And then there’s the $850 million shortfall in revenue projected for Philadelphia itself over the next five years, and a state budget that has already tanked for the current fiscal year.
Perelman’s comment to Rendell
Set this against the cost of operating a shuttle bus to the elegant, noble, state-of-the-art facility that already exists 15 minutes away in Merion, a few blocks from Michael Nutter’s home. You can see what brilliant financial sense moving the Barnes to Center City represents.
Why on earth are they doing it, or at least pretending to, in their Potemkin Village on the Parkway?
The Philadelphia Inquirer is normally the last place I would look for actual news on the subject of the Barnes, as opposed to editorial cheerleading or PR handouts. But Inga Saffron’s reporting on last week’s sham ceremony did contain one nugget. Rendell himself, it seems, has confirmed the truth of a story that has circulated for years about the plot to move the Barnes. The story was that when the Barnes completed its notorious round-the-world tour in 1995, local macher Raymond Perelman turned to the mayor at the homecoming reception and said, “You know, this stuff is too good for Merion. We’re going to bring it to Philadelphia.” Neither Rendell nor Perelman ever denied this conversation, which of course proposed a conspiracy to break a trust administered by the Commonwealth. Now, according to Saffron, Rendell has confirmed its substance.
Just so we all know where we stand, and what our own wills and bequests are worth, when art “benefactors” and their political minions decide to play fast and loose with the law.
Meanwhile, Philadelphia has a new eyesore on the Parkway, a fence shrouded in a quarter-mile of vulgar advertisement. That’s all the new Barnes may ever amount to. It’s all it ever should.
To read another comment on the groundbreaking by Gresham Riley, click here.
Let us recall that the downtown Barnes was originally scheduled to be fully open for business in 2007. That date came and went with no more accomplished than the hiring of architects who offered no plan, and promissory notes yet to be collected.
There’s still no plan, and no money up-front. At this rate, Michelangelo would yet be painting the Sistine Chapel. What is up is a fence around the prime section of Philadelphia real estate that city fathers have let to the Barnes Foundation for the munificent sum of $10 a year. The fence itself is concealed by a long swath of boarding that announces the coming of Renoir & Friends to Center City, but whose real purpose is to mask the absence of a genuine construction site.
That, too, was the purpose of the groundbreaking ceremony on October 15, in which no ground was actually broken or even touched, but only a couple of whacks taken at the sad, dilapidated, and now vandalized Youth Detention Center that (minus the two statues removed from in front of it some months ago) still occupies the site.
A few whacks and some feeble fireworks
Your correspondent was present for the event, although not invited to participate in it. I personally greeted Ed Rendell, Philadelphia’s permanent mayor; Michael Nutter, his current body double; and other dignitaries. Many people stood around under a tent. A few remarks were made. The aforesaid whacks were taken. Some feeble fireworks went up. That was the sum and substance, for all one could see, of four years’ worth of building the new Barnes.
The new scheduled opening date is 2011.
Let’s do some math—the new math of Philadelphia’s economy, and of Pennsylvania’s. Temporary relocation of the Youth Detention Center to East Falls is a $10 million item, not to mention the goodies promised to ease the NIMBY qualms of residents there. The new Center itself will cost $50 million, or maybe much more. Pennsylvania taxpayers are already on the hook for $187 million in costs for the new Barnes, including $80 million paid or payable for projects at Lincoln University, not at last sighting a part of Greater Philadelphia. There’s another $100 million-plus yet to be poneyed up in private, tax-deductible donations-- revenues that won’t flow into state or city coffers, and won’t go to desperately underfunded local arts and education programs.
There are the unassessed costs to the city of maintaining the new Barnes, including the revenues foregone from commercial development of the Parkway property, and the annual best-case operating deficit of $4.5 million officially offered in court. And then there’s the $850 million shortfall in revenue projected for Philadelphia itself over the next five years, and a state budget that has already tanked for the current fiscal year.
Perelman’s comment to Rendell
Set this against the cost of operating a shuttle bus to the elegant, noble, state-of-the-art facility that already exists 15 minutes away in Merion, a few blocks from Michael Nutter’s home. You can see what brilliant financial sense moving the Barnes to Center City represents.
Why on earth are they doing it, or at least pretending to, in their Potemkin Village on the Parkway?
The Philadelphia Inquirer is normally the last place I would look for actual news on the subject of the Barnes, as opposed to editorial cheerleading or PR handouts. But Inga Saffron’s reporting on last week’s sham ceremony did contain one nugget. Rendell himself, it seems, has confirmed the truth of a story that has circulated for years about the plot to move the Barnes. The story was that when the Barnes completed its notorious round-the-world tour in 1995, local macher Raymond Perelman turned to the mayor at the homecoming reception and said, “You know, this stuff is too good for Merion. We’re going to bring it to Philadelphia.” Neither Rendell nor Perelman ever denied this conversation, which of course proposed a conspiracy to break a trust administered by the Commonwealth. Now, according to Saffron, Rendell has confirmed its substance.
Just so we all know where we stand, and what our own wills and bequests are worth, when art “benefactors” and their political minions decide to play fast and loose with the law.
Meanwhile, Philadelphia has a new eyesore on the Parkway, a fence shrouded in a quarter-mile of vulgar advertisement. That’s all the new Barnes may ever amount to. It’s all it ever should.
To read another comment on the groundbreaking by Gresham Riley, click here.
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