Governor Andrew Cuomo announced an agreement to allow the construction of a world-class arts center on the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan.
The Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center, proposed by World Trade Center Performing Arts Center Inc., will include three theaters, rehearsal space and other amenities.
The agreement – ratified by the Port Authority’s Board of Commissioners – calls for the agency to enter into a 99-year lease with World Trade Center Performing Arts Center at $1 per year for the new facility. It includes the option for an extension of the lease for an additional 99 years at the same terms with an additional option that will allow the port authority to transfer the site to the performing arts center at some point in the future for $1.
The construction of the performing arts center will include up to 200,000-square-feet of space, three halls and rehearsal space, a restaurant, and a gift shop. The center will serve as a global hub for the creation and exchange of art, ideas and culture that will present outstanding theater, dance, music and film from the United States and around the world. It will have the ability to host educational, community and fundraising events as well as it will produce and premier works by emerging and renowned artists, companies and institutions.
Following execution of the lease, the agreement calls for the port authority to accept $48 million from the World Trade Center Performing Arts Center from funding it will receive from the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. to cover the cost of the below-ground construction needed to support the above-ground PAC facility.
The Performing Arts Center is one of the final pieces of the original World Trade Center Master Plan to be built on the site. The 9/11 Memorial Plaza, containing two large pools with the names of those who died on 9/11 inscribed around it, opened on September 12, 2011, the day after the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks. The Memorial Museum followed nearly three years later, opening to the public in May 2014.
