Floating concert hall owner tours city
Working group aims to bring barge to the area
KINGSTON, N.Y. » A working group is being organized to help bring a floating concert hall to the Hudson River after a Friday meeting with its owner went amazingly well, according to one person at the session. Peter Wetzler, a local music composer, said Friday evening that the barge’s owner, Robert Bordeau, was extremely impressed with Kingston and wanted his vessel, Point Counterpoint docked in the Hudson River. “The meeting was very amazing, I have to say,” Wetzler said of the 1 p.m. session. “Robert is completely on board bringing the boat to Kingston.” “He said he wanted to have it in Kingston and he’d do whatever it took to work with us to get the money together and the terms,” Wetzler said. Wetzler added that preliminary organizers will now set out to form a “working group” to craft a way to purchase the barge and II, get it to Kingston. The initial sale price was $2 million. Friday’s meeting was also attended by Mayor Steve Noble, representatives of the Hudson River Maritime Museum, other political officials and business representatives.
“We had a really great, lively discussion this afternoon,” Noble said in a prepared statement. “Mr. Boudreau expressed a number of times how much he has fallen in love with Kingston. He attended last night’s Celebration of the Arts and was so impressed with our incredibly welcoming, talented
and diverse community. He shared that connecting youth to music is a passion of his and how he could envision that happening here.
“I don’t have anything concrete to report at all (no, I didn’t buy the barge), but I can tell you that this conversation is going to continue,” Noble added.
Three weeks ago, Wetzler happened upon an online letter written by famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma about his distress over the possible junking of the concert barge.
The letter, Wetzler said this week, led to his effort to try and bring the barge to Kingston.
He wrote to Bordeau, founder of the American Wind Symphony Orchestra, and reached out to Noble and others.
Wetzler said the competition for it, though, is stiff. There has been interest expressed in Buffalo, France and Italy, among other places, he said.
Bordeau previously told the Chicago Tribune that Kingston “is a perfect place” for the Point Counterpoint II because the community is “going through a very creative time.”
The Point Counterpoint
II — a 195-foot-long watercraft that opens like a clam shell to reveal a concert stage — currently is docked on the Illinois River in Ottawa, Ill., about 80 miles southwest of Chicago. It was designed by Philadelphia architect Louis Kahn and was unveiled in 1976, two years after Kahn died.
Karl Slovin, president of Hutton Brickyards owner MWest Holdings Inc., has said his company might be interested in investing in the vessel.
“The Point Counterpoint II ... is a stunning architectural gem, and the possibility of reimagining this giant floating concert
hall at Hutton Brickyards is intriguing,” Slovin said last month. “Similar to Hutton Brickyards, it has a rich history and is well poised to redefine its next chapter.”
Slovin was out of the country and did not attend Friday’s meeting, Wetzler said.
MWest, based in California, bought the longdormant Hutton Brickyards property in 2014, and the site has become the home of the Smorgasburg Upstate outdoor food and flea market on occasional summer weekends. The site also hosted two concerts by folk-rock music legend Bob Dylan this past June.