Performing Arts

This first ran in The Dallas Morning News on Nov. 11, 2005:

There couldn't have been an unemployed trumpeter - or an unspoken-for gold shovel - anywhere in Dallas on Thursday morning.

They were all at the ceremonial groundbreaking for the $275 million Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, which drew a crowd of about 1,000 to a big white tent next to the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center.

"It was a cross between a wedding and a revival meeting," said one arts administrator afterward, on condition that he not be identified.

Construction of the 600-car underground parking garage that will support the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House and the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre isn't projected to begin until spring. But in the meantime, several buildings will have to be cleared from the site, including the Dallas Theater Center's Arts District Theater.

Joining the Meyerson, the Dallas Museum of Art and the Nasher Sculpture Center, the two additional buildings, a new Annette Strauss Artist Square and a grand plaza will constitute "the largest and most unique cultural district of any city in the world," said Howard Hallam, chair of the performing arts center board.

The opera house and square are being designed by Foster and Partners, the multipurpose theater by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture. Completion is projected for 2009.

With a couple of hundred donors and other movers and shakers lined up in front of tiers of wooden planters, it's hard to imagine more dirt being turned at a groundbreaking.

And Bill Lively, president and CEO of the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts Foundation, made a point that the dirt had come not just from the immediate site, but from all over the area. "We're building something for all of Dallas," Mr. Lively said, "not part of Dallas."

The 10:30 a.m. ceremony was a veritable feast of fanfares, blasted out by two dozen trumpeters and an additional brass band. And after the dirt flew, and gold stars rained down from the tent's ceiling, great bells in the newly completed tower of the Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe rang out deep tones.

Actor Tommy Lee Jones, who attended St. Mark's School here, was a star attraction. He spoke only briefly, tracing the performing arts back to cave-dweller communications and paying special tribute to lead donors for the arts facilities: Margaret McDermott, Mr. and Mrs. Winspear and the Wyly family.

Mayor Laura Miller cited the $275 million Art District project along with the Trinity River redevelopment, Calatrava bridges and the nearby 7-Eleven headquarters building as evidence of a newly energized downtown. And she said the City Council is committed to put funding for an additional building, for smaller theater and chamber music performances, on the next city bond election.

The adjacent Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, which will soon break ground for its own new facility, was represented by its Concert Choir, directed by Gloria Stephens.

But two sections from the Requiem of John Rutter - music praying for rest and perpetual light for the dead - were an odd choice for a celebratory occasion.