Charlotte Performing Arts Centre, 1988
Performing Arts Centre planning
(with Artec Consultants Inc)


The Board of Trustees of the North Carolina Performing Arts Center at Charlotte Foundation had been working with the North Carolina National Bank and the Bank's development associates for a number of years to incorporate a multi-theatre performing arts centre into a new building the Bank was proposing for downtown Charlotte. A good deal of work had been done on the project when the Foundation asked Russell Johnson of Artec Consultants Inc to review the plans made by the architect (Cesar Pelli) and the theatre consultant (Theatre Projects). Artec's work was to include a use study and use program, a space allocation program, basic design services and preliminary capital cost estimates. My share of the work involved the first three elements.

There were a number of pressures being brought to bear on the project. The Bank, on the basis of previous theatre consultant advice, had established a maximum footprint for the performing arts centre, which footprint Pelli's people were sticking to. The Bank was unwilling to commit any more space without additional concessions from the City. The Bank's development associates were anxious to get the project underway, they were paying off the loans covering their investment in a project that was a long way from seeing any return. The Foundation's board included a sufficient number of Charlotte's finest citizens who were determined they would have the arts centre they wanted.

In this exercise, it was politics rather than artistic and marketing considerations that determined the outcome. The Foundation Board would have liked us to tell them all was well with the original planning, that the two theatres could be accommodated within the allowable footprint in the new building. In conscience, we could not and told the Foundation Board that the plan the Bank was proposing wouldn't work. As a result, Artec's work on the project ended and the Foundation re-engaged their previous consultants.