Bethel, NY

For information about Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, visit www.bethelwoods.us.

July 20, 2004

Gerry makes dream a reality

By Steve Israel
Times Herald-Record
sisrael@th-record.com
   
   Bethel – Alan Gerry stood in front of the bowl-shaped field where the main stage of his performing arts center will sit.
   He thanked the executive director of the New York Philharmonic for coming to the groundbreaking next to the 1969 Woodstock festival site. Then the Liberty cable TV magnate said this to the crowd of more than 300 seated under a white tent: "You know they [the Philharmonic] are going to open the show in two years."
   Gerry was talking about the opening of the $63 million arts center, the first weekend of July 2006.
   Later, the Philharmonic's Zarin Mehta went one step further. The brother of conductor Zubin Mehta said one of the world's great orchestras could make the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts its second home.
   "It's a great idea. We've been looking for a summer home," he said, after mentioning the orchestra would first have to figure out logistics like travel and housing.
   The Philharmonic won't be the only show in this central Sullivan County town of farms and fields. The man developing the arts center's programming, David Carlucci, formerly of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, said he's already talking to performers, ranging from modern dance and ballet companies to new musicians and rock 'n' rollers.
   But you didn't need officials or Gov. George Pataki digging a shiny shovel in the ground to tell you decades of Woodstock dreams were coming true.
   You just needed to stand on the hill and listen to the rumbling of bulldozers. Thirty-five years after 450,000 blanketed Max Yasgur's dairy farm, construction on the performing arts center that will celebrate the festival has begun.
   Yesterday, some 300 invitees, from bearded Woodstock veteran Duke Devlin to bearded County Attorney Sam Yasgur, the son of Max, got a look at the model of the 4,800 seat indoor-outdoor pavilion and the interpretative center that will house an exhibit devoted to Woodstock – all built with natural-style materials chosen by Gerry.
   They munched hors d'oeuvres, sipped chardonnay and heard politicians praise Gerry, who turned a black-and-white-TV repair shop in Liberty into a $2.8 billion cable TV empire.
   State Sen. John Bonacic, R-C Mount Hope, who reiterated the promise of $15 million in state aid, even quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson: "To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived/This is to have succeeded."
   But politicians like Bonacic, Assemblywoman Aileen Gunther, D-Forestburgh, and Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-Saugerties, were playing to an easy crowd.
   Miles from the tent and chocolate strawberries, some of the folks in show-me Sullivan are finally beginning to believe this arts center will be built.
   "It can only help, it's only a good thing" said Mike Schwartz, standing outside the White Lake Firehouse. "There's no downside to it."
   "I'm all for it; it's better than a casino," said Alice Froelich at her Kenoza Lake farmhouse. "And if a local guy can do it, it's even better."
   Local guy Gerry, who was once so poor he stuffed cardboard in his shoes to cover holes, knows Sullivan County is a tough sell.
   "We read a lot of promises and ideas and unfortunately very little turns to reality," said the man wearing black Luchese cowboy boots.
   Then he paused, and you could hear reality: the rumbling of bulldozers building the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts.