The NGA and expansion

I've all but stopped posting links and such of my off-blog writing, but I'm making an exception for this: Last December I broke the story of the National Gallery of Art's interest in expanding across the street, into the Federal Trade Commission's headquarters building. This month I've written about the NGA for Washingtonian magazine. It's not online and I want to update the story for the blog audience, so forthwith some excerpts, edited for a non-DC audience... [West building photo.]

What are the NGA's options [for expansion]? The most fantastic scheme involves a possibility for which I.M. Pei planned: building under the Mall. "The downside of that is that it would be enormously expensive," [NGA director Earl "Rusty"] Powell says.

But the NGA can't build underground to the west because Tiber Creek runs beneath the sculpture garden. So the National Gallery's best-case scenario for growth is finding a way to move into the Apex Building, the Federal Trade Commission's headquarters, which would provide 187,000 square feet of usable space.

"It is an obvious solution to everything," says Powell, "but we'll just have to see."

It would take an act of Congress to transfer the Apex Building to the NGA. The FTC would have to find a new headquarters, presumably in a way that consolidates the agency's two Washington offices... And Congress would have to move with speed. If the NGA is going to move into the Apex Building, Powell says he wants it to happen by 2012. That's roughly when renovation plans for the East Building should begin to be finalized. "We have till the end of this year," he says. "Then we'll know which direction this will all head in. If the Apex Building isn't an option, we'll address it in a different way."

Expanding into the Apex Building makes more sense than any other NGA expansion plan. It would put state-of-the art education facilities -- such as the ones built recently by the Met and the Museum of Modern Art in New York--on a new NGA campus. It would keep new galleries or study centers for graphics arts and works on paper near the rest of the NGA's collection. The NGA has determined that it could build an underground link between the Apex and the West Building, and it has publicly committed to raising $100 million for renovations and other costs of moving into the Apex...

Here's the problem: Congress isn't in any rush to move the FTC out of the Apex Building. In 2005, Representative John Mica, a Florida Republican who chaired the House subcommittee on government infrastructure, introduced legislation to transfer the building from the FTC to the NGA. Nothing happened. Mica said late last year that he planned to reintroduce it early this year, but that hasn't happened. His staff says the bill remains a top priority, but it doesn't offer any timelines.

Since Mica introduced his bill, Democrats have gained control of Congress, and the NGA seems to have few Democratic allies. In fact, powerful Democratic opponents to the plan have come forward: DC delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, who chairs the House subcommittee on economic development, emergency management, and public buildings, and Michigan representative John Dingell, chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, oppose
moving the FTC.

There are no estimates of what it would cost the federal government to find 350,000
square feet--or more--of new office space for the FTC. Norton, who seems stunned that NGA officials never approached her to discuss their space needs, refuses to speculate.

"They surely knew they weren't going to get a government building," Norton says. "This isn't news to them." While Norton seems adamant, don't count out the NGA yet. Its trustees are well connected...

Other than Apex, what options does the NGA have? There's no place else in the neighborhood to go. Would the NGA have to find a building somewhere else in Washington?

"Right now I would take nothing off the table," Powell says.

Even if it was 20 blocks away from the East and West Buildings?

"I would say we would certainly seriously consider any possibility so long as it is related to the gallery's collection and the gallery's mission," Powell says.

"They should come to talk to us about that," Norton says. "They've been fussing around with this one or that one. I don't recall them ever coming to talk to me. As the old song goes, 'You've got to come by me.' "