Witness to History: Edward G. Rendell on the Creation of the Avenue of the Arts and the Kimmel Center

By Judith Kurnick

Edward (Ed) G. Rendell loves to tell stories. One of his favorites is how a strategic gamble he made when he became Philadelphia’s mayor back in 1992—and a dose of luck—sparked a turnaround in the city’s fortunes. One lasting result of that gamble was the development that became the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts.

“People and companies were moving out and we were losing our tax base,” Rendell, now 81, recalls. “More than that, we were losing what made us attractive as a city, because we couldn't get any major new businesses to come in. We were really in a downhill spiral.”

“When I was elected, I knew how we could get rid of our deficit, but I also knew that this would take two and half, maybe even three years. And I didn't want to let the bleeding continue. So we had to think of something that would stir a sense of optimism, because people had given up on the city. That was the worst part. They had given up and just left because they thought there was no hope. We had to find something to inject hope quickly.”

THE AVENUE OF THE ARTS

“So I did a lot of reading from the time I won the election, in the first week of November, until I took office in January. And sometime in early December, somebody handed me a booklet from the Central Philadelphia Development Corporation.” The report called for the creation of an arts district along Broad Street, with multiple venues united by an attractive streetscape and lighting. “And I thought, this is a good idea. Maybe we could parlay this into something.”

An informal survey of local arts groups showed that there was a need for spaces to train and perform, with one project already backed by the William Penn Foundation, and that there was great excitement at the prospect of a unified arts district along Broad Street, which was already home to the Academy of Music and Merriam Theater (now the Miller Theater). That “something” became the Avenue of the Arts.

When Rendell, as mayor (and later, governor of Pennsylvania), took hold of an idea, he was a force to be reckoned with. His version of what happened next: “We got lucky. After we announced the concept, I persuaded Governor Casey to give the Avenue of the Arts $84 million to start. That paid for the streetscape—the fancy street lights and other things that kept the Avenue together as one. And then we got lucky that the Wilma was looking for a new theater and they wanted to be on the Avenue of the Arts. The Orchestra was looking to build a new home there. So, we had a lot of natural suitors for the Avenue the Arts, but they all needed help in raising money.”

“And the way I thought we would do this,” Rendell continues, “is we would make the Avenue of the Arts the end destination that would draw spectators. In fact, I used to say, ‘We won’t know that we’re a success until you can walk down the Avenue on a Saturday night at around 10:40 … and see 10 or 15,000 people coming out of the theaters all at once, and going to dinner, going to clubs, etc.’”

THE KIMMEL CENTER

This Avenue of the Arts vision captured the imaginations of many, but reality required a pivot. Recalls Rendell, “We decided that there wasn’t enough money to build both a new venue and a place for the Orchestra to have its own concert hall. So, we developed a plan for a Regional Performing Arts Center. It would house the Orchestra in one hall and have another theater that would house several smaller groups like the Chamber Music Society and Philadanco. The plan was to keep the Academy up and running because it’s a wonderful place for shows and for opera.”

The funding base for this new performing arts center included many Orchestra donors, Rendell notes, but there were also some who “thought it was heresy for the Orchestra to move out of the Academy. Riccardo Muti (then the Orchestra’s music director) would say to me, ‘Mayor, the Academy is a great opera house, it’s a great theater for shows. It is not a concert hall. We need our own concert hall.’ And Riccardo Muti was very important because he converted a lot of the recalcitrant donors to donors for the new performing arts center. They were skeptical, but he said, ‘You can’t keep this great orchestra in an opera house. You’ve got to give it its own hall.’”

Rendell asked his wife, Marjorie (Midge), then an attorney and arts afficionado, to lead the Avenue of the Arts. And he was able to persuade real estate developer Willard (Bill) G. Rouse III to take over the project as a joint developer. “Bill Rouse did it as a civic gift,” Rendell adds. “It was very little money for him. And he did a fabulous job. Midge and Bill Rouse were a team. There were many heroes in the performing arts center story,” Rendell says. “I’d rank Bill Rouse number one and Muti and my wife, Midge, probably tied for number two.”

“Well,” he continues, “the story was that the Orchestra ran out of money to build a concert hall. And the other groups that were going to go in could pay rent but couldn’t afford anything to add to the capital. So, we were sort of stuck, and we did something that supercharged it. With the state money and a little money from the city, and the private contributions, we’d raised about $180 million and had $20 million that we were pretty sure we could raise. But architect Rafael Viñoly came to us and said, ‘Look, for $200 million, I can give you a very good performing arts center. But for $250 million, I can give you a great performing arts center.’

“When Bill Rouse and Midge came to me and said, ‘We’ve got to raise another $50 million,’” Rendell admits, “my first inclination was that $200 million was enough. But then I thought, ‘This will benefit the city for at least 50 years. And we can’t let $50 million, as hard as that was going to be to raise, be the impediment to finishing a great building.’

“So, we were going to roll the dice and try to raise the money,” Rendell continues. “And (yet again) we got lucky. Somebody introduced me to Sidney Kimmel, and we were able to persuade him to give the main gift to build a performing arts center. I think he pledged $12 million of the original $50 that we needed, and we got the Annenbergs and a number of people to kick in.”

Rendell is especially proud of the project’s civic appeal. “Eight thousand citizens of Philadelphia contributed money,” he points out. “Some of them contributed $25, some $50, some $100, some $200, $500, etc. They are also heroes. And we did produce a great building. Viñoly was tough to deal with, but he was a terrific architect. He had real vision.”

“We beat the expectations,” Rendell adds. “Not only did we open it on time, on budget, but it’s beautiful. There were some changes necessary, a couple of things that needed to be tweaked, but it was a remarkable building.”

What about Rendell’s own success measure for the Avenue of the Arts? “People who never go to a concert or a show go at lunchtime. People would walk in just to show it [the Kimmel Center] to their friends, and it became a staple, and a sort of a symbol of the city’s revival, as did the whole of the Avenue. So, it turned out that when I sat on the balcony outside of the Kimmel Center and looked out over Broad Street, I did see more than 10,000 or 15,000 people on a Saturday night. And it was really the key to the city’s revival.”

When asked to look ahead, Rendell says, “My hope is that we continue to put the right money into maintaining the performing arts center and that we continue to maintain the streetscape. And I think we just need to continue to keep the flow of people coming to live in Center City, because that will be all that the Avenue of the Arts needs to keep going strong.”

And maybe a little luck.