Robinson design team picked
LR, NYC architect firms to work on music hall project
Robinson Center Music Hall is closer to getting a face-lift after the Little Rock Advertising and Promotion Commission voted Tuesday to hire a team of architects to create the design and help with a proposed bond election to build it.
The commission voted 5-2 to hire the Polk Stanley Wilcox firm of Little Rock partnered with Ennead Architects of New York City.
The firms were among two finalist teams that returned Tuesday to answer several questions posed by commissioners, including how the renovated center would fit in with the larger Markham Street corridor and how the firms planned to help pass a bond referendum for the project. Commissioners also asked about each firm’s history of staying on or below budget. The commission intends to use mostly public funds for the renovation.
The other firms invited back for follow-up questions Tuesday were Witsell Evans Rasco of Little Rock partnered with LMN of Seattle. The firms were chosen from four finalists and more than a dozen total proposals submitted to the city’s Convention and Visitors Bureau after a request for proposals in October.
“This is a 1939 building and, frankly, it’s boring inside,” said Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola. “I want to see a wow factor on the inside. I want to know how we get there ... to a modern, attractive and welcoming inside.”
The Convention and Visitors Bureau has not secured funding for the project beyond paying for the archi- tectural design. The bureau manages and maintains the facility, where it also has offices.
The bureau, along with the commission — which includes Stodola and at-large City Director Gene Fortson — last year announced the intention to seek a publicly financed bond referendum likely to go before voters this fall.
The renovation, estimated to cost between $50 million and $65 million, would improve acoustics, retrofit the building against earthquakes, and remodel the inside and outside to give the building a more modern and community-incorporated look. The final cost will depend on the architects’ design and the approval of the commission.
Some planned changes include reducing the number of seats in the music hall from 2,609 to between 1,800 and 2,300, thus creating a more intimate atmosphere for performances. Moving balcony seats and the rear orchestra level, and allowing the symphony area to extend into the audience seating area for better sound also will be considered.
Other plans call for increasing the size of the stage, reducing the office space by about 3,000 square feet and downsizing the exhibition hall by more than half.
Much of the final design — which could include a glass-fronted restaurant on the river, a larger lobby, sweeping walkways and more green space to engage the public — will depend on the back-and-forth between the commissioners and the firms during the design process.
The Polk Stanley Wilcox and Ennead firms presented mock-up illustrations Tuesday. The illustrations showed a glass-sided restaurant on the back of the center facing the Arkansas River and greeting travelers as they cross the Broadway Bridge into Little Rock. Another illustration showed diners chatting in front of a view of the overlapping bridges downriver.
“This [building] could be so much more welcoming,” Richard Olcott, the design principal for Ennead Architects, said as he sketched pictures of how the center could be the gateway to downtown. “We could create an entranceway to the whole city ... giving a new face to Broadway.”
Originally, the center and music hall were finished in 1939, and an addition was built in the early 1970s. Other than cosmetic fixes, the center has remained the same since.
Polk Stanley Wilcox and Ennead representatives noted Tuesday projects they have worked on in the past, both individually and as a team. They included renovations to Carnegie Hall in New York City; the Oklahoma Civic Center Music Hall in Oklahoma City; the recently finished Stanford Orchestra Hall in Palo Alto, Calif.; the El Dorado Convention Center; Heifer International headquarters in downtown Little Rock; and the neighboring Clinton Presidential Center.
The visitors bureau will begin negotiating a contract with the first-choice firms to start the design process.
The renovation is tentatively scheduled to start in the summer of 2014 and last through the fall of 2016, to run concurrently with the anticipated reconstruction of the Broadway Bridge by the state Highway and Transportation Department.