High Performance

Progress on the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts is evident every time you pass by it on Broad Street and see more glass panels gleaming from its roof. What is less obvious, however, is the progress being made on deals with the building’s future tenants.

But contracts with the resident companies are "virtually complete," Willard Rouse III, a Kimmel Center board member and developer of Liberty Place, told members of the Center City Residents Association (CCRA) during the group’s annual meeting on May 22.

"We expect contracts to be signed within the next two months," Rouse said, stressing that the process has been tough. "We are asking them to do something they’ve never had to do before — there are no existing agreements between the ballet or the orchestra and the Academy of Music."

Future tenants include the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Opera Company of Philadelphia, American Theater Arts for Youth, Philadanco, the Chamber Music Society, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and Peter Nero and Philly Pops.

Rouse is enthusiastic about the Kimmel Center’s innovative design. A "serpentine" pattern of 1-inch-wide strips of wood will be stacked 10 feet high along the walls of the center’s concert hall, Rouse said.

"The place will be filled with wood. I hate to think it is coming from any of those countries the Inquirer has been writing about this week," he added, referring to the paper’s series on deforestation in poor countries.

Also at Tuesday evening’s CCRA meeting, the group elected a new president and board of directors. Pamela Rosser, who runs her own public relations firm, will serve a two-year term as president. Louis Coffey was elected as executive vice president of the association. Rosser is replacing Lenora Berson and Coffey is replacing Rosser, who was executive vice president.

—Gwen Shaffer