The Kennedy Center’s Board of Trustees voted Thursday to close the performing arts center to proceed with a planned two-year renovation, bucking concerns from preservationists and Democrats who fought to keep the center open.
The results of the vote, reported by multiple outlets, fall in line with President Donald Trump’s February decision to close the facility for a two-year period to address structural damage to the theater. The board also voted to add Trump’s name to the building on Thursday, according to the New York Times and the Associated Press.
Trump’s two-year closure, which had been set to begin in July, was initially thwarted when Obama appointee U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled against it, saying the board’s March vote to close was based on “insufficient” information.
The judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia also ruled that the performing arts center could not be renamed to the “Trump-Kennedy Center” and had to stay a memorial to former President John F. Kennedy alone.
The board met in a much-anticipated meeting to discuss the closure and renaming, among other topics, such as its budget and the financial woes facing the National Symphony Orchestra. In this meeting, the board decided to move ahead with the renaming and the planned two-year closure of the main building, but keep the REACH wing of the facility open for performances and as a memorial to Kennedy, according to the New York Times.
The board’s vote will now head back to Cooper for his opinion, with the center needing to share its decision with the judge by next week, per the outlet.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the Kennedy Center for comment.
Cooper had written in his May decision that the board had “fallen grossly short of prudent decision-making” in its March vote to close the facility, but had not ruled out the prospect that the board could, at some point, vote to proceed with plans for a closure if it took the right steps. He said the board had initially failed to consider its “statutory obligations” and any possible consequences to “programming and memorial functions.”
“To be clear, assuming that long-term closure of the Kennedy Center is within the Board’s discretion and does not require Congressional authorization, this Court is not to substitute its judgment for the Board’s as to whether a temporary but long-term closure is, all things considered, a good idea. The Court takes no position on that question,” Cooper wrote in his opinion.
An appeals court backed Cooper’s decision in July.
Matt Floca, the executive director of the Kennedy Center who previously served as vice president of facilities operations, was the official to recommend the two-year closure to Trump.
AN INSIDE LOOK AT THE STATE OF THE KENNEDY CENTER BEFORE TWO-YEAR RENOVATION
“You can never really truly predict all of the different productions that were going to happen, and you can’t predict all of the things that you’re going to find when you get into a construction project,” Floca said in April. “So the recommendation was just natural: You shut the building down, temporarily, and you make this investment, and then you reopen.”
The renovations are set to address various structural issues around the facility, including extensive water damage, rusting steel that feels like “tissue paper,” and over three decades-old industrial chillers. The renovation projects are all funded by the $257 million earmarked for the Kennedy Center in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.