Trumps handpicked Kennedy Center board votes to immediately close venue for renovations
President Donald Trump’s handpicked Kennedy Center board voted Tuesday to immediately shutter the performing arts center, a source familiar with the decision said, after its members argued the institution is in “dire” financial and structural shape.The board’s vote came shortly after a federal judge in Washington, D.C., rejected the board’s latest effort to add Trump’s name to the building’s facade — a move the board says is necessary to save the memorial to John F.Kennedy from bankruptcy.The board had cited a partial ceiling collapse in the center’s Grand Foyer earlier this month as evidence the center needed to be immediately closed for repairs.
A construction consultant and the center’s director “consider the main building to be unsafe for continued occupancy, and anticipate further risk to the public and employees if the building is not immediately closed and renovations begun,” the board said in a draft resolution to close the center for two years.It was the third time since February that the board voted to close the center for renovations for a two-year period.
Ex-officio board member Rep.Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, has challenged those efforts in court, saying the board needs congressional approval to close the venue and did not fully investigate whether it would be possible to keep parts of the center open during renovations.Attorneys for the board have said the legal action has kept them from doing necessary repairs, but the judge presiding over the case noted at a hearing Tuesday — as he had previously — that his earlier order preventing full closure allowed for emergency repairs.
Trump, the board’s chairman, joined the closed-door meeting virtually and spent several minutes criticizing both Beatty and the judge who blocked his name from being added to the façade, according to a source familiar with the meeting.In a separate resolution that was not expected to be taken up Tuesday, the Kennedy Center said it “is in a dire fina...