Although plans to build a cultural institution on the World Trade Center site had been percolating for years, it is only now, two decades after the 2003 master plan for ground zero was created, that a performing arts center is finally preparing to open there in September. Despite being called the Perelman Performing Arts Center, named after billionaire businessman Ronald O. Perelman, who jump-started the project in 2016 with a $75 million donation, the person who got the project over the finish line and gave more money than Mr. Perelman, is the billionaire former mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg. He has given $130 million to the arts center as a gift, a donation that has not been previously revealed, and stepped up as chairman of the board in 2020 when the organization needed a strong fundraiser.
The center, which will ultimately cost $500 million and features a flexible interior with three theater spaces that can be combined to provide multiple configurations, is on track to have a ribbon-cutting ceremony on September 13. Its promotional materials once called the center “the Perelman” for short, but they now tend to call it “PAC NYC,” with PAC standing for Performing Arts Center. Bloomberg has been involved with both this center and the Shed, another expensive, architecturally striking arts space that opened in Hudson Yards a year before the pandemic struck, as a philanthropist and mayor. Bloomberg is a firm believer in the idea that the World Trade Center site should be about renewal as well as loss and sees the arts as an important driver of economic development.
Despite leadership changes, the Perelman center’s artistic plans, which promise to showcase theater, dance, music, chamber opera, and film, should soon come into focus when it announces its first season on June 14. Bloomberg sounds bullish on New York as a city that always bounces back and said that the center is “what downtown needs.” The economics are going to work, he believes, and lots of people are going to want to use this location.
