Funding isn't nailed down, so the extent to which the master plan actually gets done remains to be seen, but the Kimmel board's approval is at least an affirmation of a key part of the center's original ambition: to be a major source of urban frisson by extending offerings well beyond performance times.
"In the end, you've got to have this place vibrantly working 18 hours out of the day," said James Timberlake, principal of KieranTimberlake, the Philadelphia architecture firm engaged for most of the undertaking.
Kimmel president Anne Ewers said the master plan "takes what the mission and vision of the Kimmel Center was when it opened and now allows that to really become a reality. From my perspective, they have answered every problem this building has. I think it's extraordinary. You ask, my gosh, why wasn't this done right the first time around?"
No one will put a number to the project - it hasn't been priced out, Kimmel leaders say - though clearly the price tag is well into the tens of millions of dollars.
In an interview this week, architects volunteered that the renovations do not imply failure of the original design, by New York's Rafael Viñoly Architects, which lost some details that ended up being value-engineered out.
"It's taken 10 years to sort out how Philadelphia wants to use that space," said Timberlake. "There's a lot to love about this building. Yet the building hasn't served its constituents in a way it needs to serve them."
Many agree. The Kimmel has drawn complaints for being figuratively and literally cold, acoustically wanting, lacking in amenities, expensive to its resident companies, inhospitable with operating policies that discourage visitation - and, to the old guard, for not being the Academy of Music.
