Is Dallas doing the right thing with this performance center

The City has been touting its Performance Arts Center currently under construction in the downtown Arts District as the greatest thing since New York's Lincoln Center. Oops. Sunday's New York Times argues the Lincoln Center may not have been the greatest idea to come down the arts pike. One paragraph of the story states:

"Yet if a sprawling performing-arts complex like Lincoln Center were proposed today, it would never be built. Some of the impediments would be practical: the daunting costs, the lack of political consensus, the shift in attitudes toward large-scale urban development projects that displace entire neighborhoods. But the larger question is whether such a complex should be built in the first place. The idealistic assumption that sparked the creation of Lincoln Center — that orchestras, opera companies, ballet troupes and theaters would have much to gain by becoming partners in a centralized complex — would be vigorously challenged today.

"Nothing can be more energizing to the cultural life of a city than dynamic performing arts institutions. But the danger in grouping them together is that the creative identities of individual institutions — a bold modern dance company, a great symphony orchestra — can blur behind the walls of an officious encampment. The promise of arts organizations working in sync can become a daily grind of competing boards and directors stifled by bureaucracy."

Dallas' project does receive a mention in the story:

"For a time after Lincoln Center was built other cities raced to imitate it, even if many projects were ill-conceived, like the sprawling, ugly Barbican in London. The ideal of the cultural complex still holds sway in Dallas, where this fall the $338 million Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, dominated by a new house for the Dallas Opera, will begin its inaugural season. But that is an exception to a long trend away from collaborative centers."

It's an interesting concept. The conceptual ideas behind the physical plants here in Dallas seemed wise and sound. To make it work, however, is going to require the cooperation of bodies that haven't had to cooperate or compromise in the past.