Marshall Rose Resigns from Lincoln Center

The billion-dollar redevelopment of New York City’s Lincoln Center has been faced with numerous problems in recent weeks. The construction dollars in play in the city are drawn towards the gaping hole in Lower Manhattan. Internecine squabbles have prevented a clear-cut consensus on what shape the redevelopment is to take. And resignations from top executives are piling up on Center desks. Only three and a half weeks after Gordon J. Davis resigned as the Center’s president, Marshall Rose, the real estate executive who had headed up the redevelopment project, has thrown in his towel.

Rose had become a target for the infighting and maneuvering of the heads of Lincoln Center’s eleven tenant organizations, which include the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and Jazz at Lincoln Center. With the additional economic uncertainty that arrived in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11th, Rose may have seen that his chance to achieve a legacy by June 2002, when he had originally planned to leave, was slipping away.

Nevertheless, Rose asserted in a letter to the Center constituents that “[t]he elements are in place for the constituents to choose a master plan that meets both the needs and the aspirations of Lincoln Center and the various cultural institutions that comprise it.” He said that given the current pace of progress, the head of the redevelopment project should be prepared to stay for 15 years – a timetable that did not make sense to Rose at age 65.

Originally Published October 27, 2001