Trump’s Kennedy Center overhaul adds to building spree reshaping Washington

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON, Feb 2 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s planned overhaul of the Kennedy Center adds the venue to a growing list of construction projects by the former property developer that, if carried out, would amount to the most extensive remaking of Washington’s landscape in decades.

The two-year renovation of the performing arts center named for President John F. Kennedy is the latest and most culturally charged element of a building spree in the U.S. capital, which also includes plans for a $400 million White House ballroom and a 250-foot monument known as the Independence Arch.

“It’s in very bad shape. It’s run down. It’s dilapidated, sort of dangerous,” Trump told reporters on Monday, when asked about the center’s lengthy shutdown.

Trump’s sweeping redesign proposals would be arguably the most dramatic since Theodore Roosevelt championed a structural overhaul of the National Mall in the early 1900s. In the 1950s, President Harry Truman gutted and rebuilt the White House. 

In more recent decades, presidents have typically tinkered around the edges. George W. Bush presided over a refurbishment of the White House’s Lincoln Bedroom. Under Joe Biden, the White House completed a $50 million rebuild of the Situation Room in the West Wing.

Trump’s announcement on Sunday on the redevelopment of the Kennedy Center, which a board of directors appointed by the president already renamed the Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, follows a rash of cancellations in recent months by performers protesting his control of the institution.

Closing the center for what Trump called “Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding” would seem to put a pause to negative headlines about the show cancellations and slumping ticket sales.

“In other words, if we don’t close, the quality of Construction will not be nearly as good,” Trump said in a social media post announcing the move to shutter the 1960s structure along the Potomac River.

Richard Grenell, who was appointed by Trump as president of the arts center, defended the move in an interview with NewsNation, saying the president was saving the institution.

“We’re in a unique position to have a president who’s also a builder,” Grenell said, recollecting how on a recent visit to the center Trump had inspected the basement and even the sewer system and complained about disrepair.

TRUMP ALLIES HELP TO FUND PROJECTS

Trump’s focus on pet projects, largely funded by his wealthy friends and powerful corporations, comes as many Americans fret about pocket-book issues ahead of November elections that will determine whether his Republicans hang on to control of the U.S. Congress.

Since taking office a year ago, Trump has put gold adornments and statuettes in the Oval Office, in a style he prefers. The grass in the Rose Garden was dug up and paved over with white stone. 

He tore down the East Wing of the White House to make way for a ballroom that, at 90,000 square feet, would dwarf the old executive mansion. The project has prompted a lawsuit from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a privately funded non-profit organization.

He is pondering a renovation of the West Wing of the White House as well as a redo of Dulles International Airport 30 miles from downtown Washington. In October, he unveiled a lavish refurbishment of the Lincoln Bedroom bathroom.

Trump’s latest passion project is planning for a monument at the gateway to Arlington National Cemetery. It has been dubbed the “Arc de Trump” by the media and would be located on the Virginia side of the Potomac River directly across Memorial Bridge from the Lincoln Memorial. 

Trump told reporters on Saturday he is setting up a committee to plan for the arch. He said he was not sure how tall it would be, but the Washington Post reported that he was keen on a plan that would erect a 250-foot-high structure.

That would make the arch much taller than the 164-foot Arc de Triomphe in Paris and the Lincoln Memorial, named for Civil War-era President Abraham Lincoln, which stands at about 100 feet.

“It’ll be substantial. I’d like it to be the biggest one of all. We’re the biggest, most powerful nation. I’d like it to be the biggest one,” he said on Saturday.

On Sunday, Trump posted a drawing of the new arch, which would be topped by two eagle statues and a bewinged, crowned angel holding aloft a torch. 

(Reporting By Steve Holland, editing by Ross Colvin and Diane Craft)