President Donald Trump is clarifying that he does not plan to fully tear down the Kennedy Center, a day after he announced that he would close it for two years beginning in July for “construction, revitalization and complete rebuilding.”
“I’m not ripping it down,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, Feb. 2. “I’ll be using the steel. So we’re using the structure, we’re using some of the marble, and some of the marble comes down.”
Trump estimated the project will cost around $200 million.
“It’s funny, in real estate and building I’ve done so much of it, I’ve done so well with it — you want to sit with something for a little while before you decide on what you want to do,” he said Monday. “It’s in very bad shape. It’s run down. It’s dilapidated.”
Trump also said the center, where he attended a movie premiere for first lady Melania Trump’s documentary, Melania, last week, “was sort of dangerous.”
“We’re going to close it and we’re going to make it unbelievable, far better than it ever was,” he said.
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Response to the plan and questions about the timing
On Sunday night, Trump said in a social media post that on July 4, the performing arts center will close to begin construction of what he described as a “new and spectacular Entertainment Complex.”
“This important decision, based on input from many Highly Respected Experts, will take a tired, broken, and dilapidated Center, one that has been in bad condition, both financially and structurally for many years, and turn it into a World Class Bastion of Arts, Music, and Entertainment,” Trump, 79, wrote in his post.
He said his proposal was subject to approval by the board of the Kennedy Center, which is composed of MAGA loyalists whom he appointed after returning to office.
Some of Trump’s critics have questioned whether the announcement is connected to performers and musicians pulling out of appearances at the Kennedy Center since he ousted the previous leadership and added his name to the building.
“Trump is scrambling to shut down the Kennedy Center after discovering that American artists and performers won’t put up with his partisan takeover and unlawful renaming,” Rep. Joyce Beatty, a Democrat from Ohio and ex-officio trustee of the center’s board, said in a statement. “And let’s be clear: a remodeling job won’t restore the Kennedy Center to what it was. A return to artistic independence will.”
Renaming and comparisons to the East Wing project
In December, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced the Kennedy Center, which Congress renamed as a living memorial for President John F. Kennedy in 1964, would now be known as the Trump-Kennedy Center after the board bypassed Capitol Hill and voted on a name change.
When Trump first announced his new White House ballroom project, his administration similarly suggested that he would not destroy the existing East Wing and would only add onto it.
After the East Wing was unexpectedly knocked down in October, Josh Fisher, the director of the White House Office of Administration, told a D.C. planning commission that a cost analysis on fixing all the issues with the East Wing ended up revealing that “demolition and reconstruction provided the lowest total cost ownership and most effective long-term strategy.”
The ballroom had an initial budget of $200 million, though the cost is now estimated to be closer to $400 million.
