Report: NYC Backs Guggenheim Plan

NEW YORK (AP) â€” City officials have said they would donate land and money toward the building of a proposed new Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in lower Manhattan. <br><br>The new 40-story museum, designed

Tuesday, November 28th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

NEW YORK (AP) â€” City officials have said they would donate land and money toward the building of a proposed new Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in lower Manhattan.

The new 40-story museum, designed by Frank O. Gehry, would be located on three piers at the foot of Wall Street. It is expected to cost $678 million.

The city intends to provide the land and approximately 10 percent of the construction costs, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

The proposed 575,000-square-foot museum would be twice as large as the one Gehry designed for the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain, and 10 times larger than the museum's Frank Lloyd Wright-designed headquarters on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

The design, like that of the museum in Bilbao, would consist of glass, stone, and titanium curving into the sky in a freeform, organic style.

Before construction can begin, a major fund-raising campaign and comprehensive environmental and zoning review must be completed. The project would then be subject to the approval of city officials.

The fund-raising and approval process is expected to take about two years. Construction is then projected to take another three years.

The proposal includes plans for new departments in architecture, design, media and technology, as well as exhibition space, office space for 400 employees, a 1,200-seat performing arts space, shops and restaurants. Outside the museum would be a new park, outdoor skating rink, riverside promenade and sculpture garden.

The structure was slated to become the museum's new headquarters. It would house works created after the end of World War II, leaving the uptown museum to focus on early Modernist works.