In the News: Update on the WTC Performing Arts Center

••• The Wall Street Journal has an update about the performing arts center at the World Trade Center. Last we had heard, the budget was slashed in half; a new design is expected “to be presented later this fall, at the next board meeting of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. […] In July the LMDC agreed to fund a $500,000 study to see whether the current conceptual design could be modified to fit the new budget parameters. Over the past few months, center officials have been working with consultants and an unnamed architectural firm to revamp the plan. Their latest take envisions a roughly 80,000-square-foot building, rising three to four stories above ground, where new works of theater, dance, music and digital art would be produced [….] The most recent update proposes a 600- to 700-seat auditorium and a 200-seat theater on the main floor. Both could be flexibly configured or combined into one larger hall. Upstairs, two additional theaters are proposed that could also double as rehearsal studios, though those plans could shift. On the ground floor would be a cafe or restaurant space, yet to be designed.”

••• Downtown Express profiles gallerist and longtime Tribecan Hal Bromm.

••• Fitness studio Physique 57 “is slated to open at 55 Broadway in January, its fourth Manhattan location.” —DNAinfo

••• “A judge has recused himself from a legal dispute over the development plans for a landmarked clock tower” at 346 Broadway. —New York Law Journal

••• “Poker pro Beth Shak, who’s also famous for owning 1,200 pairs of shoes, is engaged to her boyfriend of nearly two years, Bernstein wealth manager Mark Yadgaroff. We hear that Mark surprised Beth when she returned to their Tribeca home from the gym with 10 dozen red and white roses, as well as a 4.5-carat marquise diamond ring, which was surrounded by scalloped round diamonds.” —New York Post

••• A man claiming to be actor Tracy Morgan’s son and his friends spent “$50,000 on bottles” at Haus. —New York Post

••• Tribeca artist David Lyle has a new show in San Francisco, so SF Weekly profiled him. “The same thing that’s happening in San Francisco is happening here,” he’s quoted as saying, “and I’m being evicted in a couple of months. I live in the last artists’ building in Tribeca, which is now like a billionaire’s neighborhood. They just painted over this old graffitied wall that has been here forever.” Below: Lyle’s “There Goes The Neighborhood.”

There Goes the Neighborhood by David Lyle

 

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