The College of William & Mary is scaling back plans to construct a proposed $350 million integrated arts complex, due to difficulty securing funding.
A feasibility study completed in January 2009 proposed the university demolish the existing Muscarelle Museum of Art and Phi Beta Kappa Hall in favor of a $350 million, 300,000-square-foot arts complex that would house the new art museum and the music, dance, theatre, visual arts and art history departments.
Citing the “considerable cost,” Vice President of Administration Anna Martin told the Board of Visitors last week that the college has not been able to move forward with the plan, which would have required state investment and private fundraising.
“We found ourselves in a place where, as Provost [Michael] Halleran said, the perfect was getting in the way of the necessary,” Martin told the board. “It had been almost four years and we all agreed that we needed to find a way to break the project into digestible pieces in order to move forward. Otherwise, we were going to be paralyzed.
“Unfortunately, the college has had to make some difficult decisions that require us to scale back our ambitions and focus on our most immediate needs,” she said.
This week, the college will release a Request for Proposal to have an architect conduct a more limited feasibility study to see whether the current facilities can be renovated and what new construction might be needed.
One of the university’s key questions is whether Phi Beta Kappa Hall, commonly called PBK, can be renovated for academic use, despite having not been significantly improved since it opened in 1956. PBK currently houses the campus stage, along with classrooms and offices for theatre, speech and dance.
W&M hopes to have the feasibility study completed by March, Martin said, and aims to include the project in its Capital Plan for 2014-2020. The 2012-2018 Capital Six Year Plan contained requests for state funding: $250,000 for the first biennium for planning and $95 million in the second biennium for construction. The $250,000 request was not approved by the state in the first biennium.
Over the summer, President Taylor Reveley, Vice President of Finance Sam Jones, Halleran and Martin visited all of the art facilities and spoke with individuals from each department to get a sense of the greatest needs. It became apparent that the academic departments’ needs should be met first, Martin said.
“The summer review revealed that theatre and music are in the most dire need of help from both a spacing and condition point-of-view,” she said. The new plan prioritizes addressing theatre and music first, followed by dance, art and art history.
When a show of Impressionist works opened at the Muscarelle last fall, Director Aaron De Groft told WY Daily that new facilities would go a long way toward boosting the university’s reputation for the arts. “It could be our chance to attract world-class faculty and world-class students, and greatly contribute to town-gown relations,” he said. “The museum and the arts are so worthwhile, so important in our community and of national significance. We simply need appropriate facilities.”
In her remarks to the board, Martin said the university wanted to build the original concept for an integrated arts complex, but has to address its pressing space needs.
“The 2009 study produced a beautiful, absolutely stunning conception – which would have been wonderful to build – but if we kept hanging on to that dream, things are going to keep deteriorating for the academic departments,” she said. “We are committed to building the needed space as defined by the 2009 study. It will just be done in segments, over time.”
