Lincoln Center Scraps a $500 Million Geffen Hall Renovation

Ms. Spar pointed to the old plan’s proposal to lower the auditorium, currently an escalator ride up, to be level with the center’s plaza — the centerpiece of the design by Heatherwick Studio and Diamond Schmitt Architects — which would have required considerable underground excavation, work on the building’s foundations, and a reconfiguration of its plumbing and other systems.

Ms. Borda said that the turning point came when the construction and design teams said in recent months that they could not guarantee that the work would be done fast enough for the orchestra to lose its hall for only two seasons. Suddenly there was talk of construction dragging on into a third Philharmonic season, which posed a real danger to an orchestra that, like most of its peers, is already losing its subscription base and can ill-afford to spend a lengthy period in temporary housing.

“This was news — this was a genuine surprise,” Ms. Borda said. “For the Philharmonic, the issue of being out of the hall for three years was simply profound.”

Ms. Spar said that Mr. Geffen — whose $100 million gift was to be made in stages, with $15 million given up front and the rest as the project hit certain milestones — was “on board” with the decision to change directions.

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In a brief statement, Mr. Geffen, whose gift renamed the hall for him in perpetuity, said: “I’m happy. I know they’ll do something great.”

The new approach will be less monumental and more incremental. There is not yet a price tag, a design team, a time frame, or a specific set of proposals, but Ms. Spar and Ms. Borda said they envisioned substantially reconfiguring the auditorium with work that could be done in phases. They said they would work to improve the hall’s acoustics; explore the idea of bringing the stage further into the auditorium, as the Mostly Mozart festival does in the space each summer; and weigh losing some seats to make the cavernous hall feel more intimate.

The Philharmonic has been citing an “urgent need” to renovate its home since at least 1999. In the years since, it has tapped the architect Norman Foster to create a redesign that went nowhere; made an embarrassing attempt to leave Lincoln Center altogether and return to its old home at Carnegie Hall; and wrangled for years about what it wanted, what it could afford, and how it could survive once construction started.

But the project seemed to be getting on track in recent years: Lincoln Center negotiated a $15 million deal to persuade the heirs of Avery Fisher, for whom the hall was named after an earlier renovation, to relinquish the naming rights; the hall was renamed for Mr. Geffen in recognition of his gift; and a design team was chosen. The advancing plans even became a factor in the change of music directors at the Philharmonic: Alan Gilbert said that he decided to leave after last season in part so his successor — who will be Jaap van Zweden — would have time to acclimate before construction began.

Then both organizations lost their leaders. Jed Bernstein, the president of Lincoln Center, left his post last year after failing to disclose a relationship with a staff member. Earlier this year the Philharmonic’s president, Matthew VanBesien, stepped down as well. With a leadership vacuum at a key juncture, responsibility for the project fell largely to Katherine G. Farley, the chairwoman of Lincoln Center, who had helped secure Mr. Geffen’s gift and drew on her experience in the real estate industry as she worked to guide the process.

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Ms. Farley said in a statement that she remained “committed to creating a welcoming and world-class experience in the re-envisioned hall” and that “we are excited to be embarking on a new master plan to achieve those goals.”

Both Ms. Spar and Ms. Borda were selected for their new roles in part because of their experience with capital projects. In her prior job as the president of Barnard College, Ms. Spar started a $400 million capital campaign. Ms. Borda led the Los Angeles Philharmonic when it moved into its enormously successful Frank Gehry-designed home, Walt Disney Concert Hall, in 2003. They took over as the schematic design phase of the Geffen Hall project was being completed — and both became concerned by what they were seeing.

Hanging over the project were questions about how much money the city could be expected to contribute. Recent mayors, including Rudolph W. Giuliani and Michael R. Bloomberg, have made large capital investments in New York’s major cultural institutions, but the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio has focused its cultural policy on smaller institutions in all five boroughs. In recent years, Lincoln Center has worked to expand its programs for children outside of Manhattan, and last year it released a report that tried to quantify its economic contributions to New York. Officials at Lincoln Center said they had not yet reached the stage of discussing financial support for Geffen Hall with the city.

The hall has been criticized for its acoustics since it opened, but some musicians who have performed there say that its bigger problem is its lack of intimacy — one of the things the new scheme will try to address.

“In terms of the kind of human heart-to-heart contact that you really look for in a concert setting, it’s hard to achieve that here,” Mr. Gilbert said last spring as he prepared to conduct his final concerts as music director. “Because there is a kind of distant, impersonal feeling that is just sort of in the gestalt of the room.”

While the Philharmonic always realized there was a risk to being out of their home for even two seasons, its previous leaders were gambling that a dazzling new home would prove a powerful draw — short-term pain for long-term gain. But Ms. Spar and Ms. Borda said they were confident that even a less ambitious overhaul could still transform the concertgoing experience.

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