“JCC plans $15 million cultural center in northern Palm Beach County - Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel” plus 1 more |
| JCC plans $15 million cultural center in northern Palm Beach County - Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel Posted: PALM BEACH GARDENS — Following the growth of the Jewish population to northern Palm Beach County, The Jewish Community Center of the Greater Palm Beaches has planned a $15 million facility for arts and recreation off Hood Road."There is no Kravis Center, no Norton Art Gallery in north county. We want to be the cultural center for everyone in north Palm Beach County," said Paul Gross, president of the JCC board of directors. Plans call for a 37,000-square-foot center with a preschool, a pool, summer day camp, sports fields and a full-size gymnasium. Areas for lectures, group fitness, recreation, adult education and children with special needs are planned. The facility will not have a worship center. Last week, the JCC paid about $4 million for the 14-acre vacant property owned by 95 Hood LLC. Building plans have not been submitted to the city's planning department. If approved, the opening is scheduled for the fall 2012. The center is expected to create about 100 full- and part-time jobs. The county's Jewish population overall has increased from 171,000 in 1990 to 274,000 in 2005, according to a 2005 study by the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County. About one-fourth of Palm Beach County residents are Jewish, putting it behind only New York, Los Angeles and Chicago in per capita Jewish population. "This creates a tremendous potential to build a more vibrant, diverse community," said Rabbi Berel Barash of the Chabad Synagogue under construction in Abacoa. The JCC closed its West Palm Beach center on Military Trail in 2008 due to declining membership as Jewish residents moved north and west. It opened a Palm Beach Gardens center in Midtown on PGA Boulevard. That center will close when the new one opens. The nonprofit organization also operates a 54,000-square-foot center on Jog Road near Boynton Beach. The Oxbridge Academy of the Palm Beaches, a private college-preparatory school, is scheduled to open on the JCC site on Military Trail. Palm Beach billionaire Bill Koch is spending $50 million to develop the school. The north county JCC property borders on the Briger property, a 1-square-mile tract approved for The Scripps Research Institute and other biotech companies. Also planned are offices, retail, a 300-room hotel and about 2,700 homes, townhouses and apartments. "In 20 years, we want to be the cultural and education center for all the bright people that Scripps attracts here," Gross said. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Streep, James Taylor among cultural medalists - Boston Globe Posted: WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama honored 20 artists, scholars and writers -- from James Taylor to Quincy Jones, from Philip Roth to Joyce Carol Oates -- in a salute to the arts and humanities that embraced both celebrity and quiet achievement. The president and first lady Michelle Obama filled the East Room of the White House Wednesday with an array of talent that transcended generations and reached into the worlds of letters and music, history and dance, criticism and film. "One of the great joys of being president is getting a chance to pay tribute to the artists and authors, poets and performers who have touched our hearts and opened our minds," Obama said, adding with a knowing look, "or in the case of Quincy Jones and James Taylor, set the mood." Multiple Oscar winner Meryl Streep and Harper Lee, author of "To Kill a Mockingbird," were also honored, but were unable to attend the ceremony. The president bestowed 10 National Medal of Arts and 10 National Humanities Medals. "I speak personally here because there are people here whose books or poetry or works of history shaped me," he said. Nodding conspiratorially toward arts medalist and jazz artist Sonny Rollins seated before him, he said: "I've got these thumb-worn editions of these works of art and these old records where they were still vinyl, Sonny, before they went digital that helped inspire me or get me through a tough day or take risks that I might not otherwise have taken." Later, Taylor made his way to the White House press briefing room where he marveled at the nearly saucer-sized medal around his neck. "I'm just over the moon, sailing," he said. Taylor, who campaigned for Obama in 2008 and had to cancel a concert with his son Ben in Des Moines to attend Wednesday's ceremony, offered the president a bit of political advice "I think that the administration has been almost too modest in their accomplishments," he said. "I'm hoping the American public understands who we've got here, what we've got in this president." In his salute, Obama noted that the honorees had contributed to both the intellectual growth of the nation, but also had provided the nation with diversion -- a chance to laugh or escape from the pressures of the moment. "We also remember the art that challenged our assumptions; the scholarship that brought us closer to the events of our history; the poetry that we loved -- or at least the poetry that we might recite to a girlfriend to seem deep," he said. "Of course, we still hum the great songs by the musicians in this room -- songs that in many cases have been the soundtrack of our lives over decades." As the honorees and guests made their way out the East Room, the Marine Band, a fixture at ceremonies such as this, played some familiar strains -- it was a medley of Taylor favorites. Others receiving arts medals: --Van Cliburn, the world-renown pianist who broke into the international scene in 1958 by winning the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. --Quincy Jones, musician, composer, record producer, and arranger of multiple musical fusions. --Mark di Suvero, the abstract expressionist sculptor. --Donald Hall, the poet laureate of the United States from 2006 to 2007. --Robert Brustein, theatre critic, producer, playwright, and founder of the Yale Repertory Theatre and the American Repertory Theatre. --Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, the longest running American dance festival, based in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. Receiving medals for the humanities: --Daniel Aaron, founding president of the Library of America. --Bernard Bailyn, Pulitzer Prize winning historian focused on early U.S. history. --Jacques Barzun, scholar and a leader in the field of cultural history. --Wendell E. Berry, poet and conservationist and author of more than 40 books. --Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, scholar and literary critic. --Stanley Nider Katz, president of the American Council of Learned Societies. --Arnold Rampersad, biographer and literary critic known for books that profiled W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Jackie Robinson, and Ralph Ellison. --Philip Roth, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of 24 novels, including "Portnoy's Complaint" and "American Pastoral." --Gordon Wood, scholar, historian and Pulitzer Prize winner. © Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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