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Best of 2006 Awards
Bethel Woods Center for the Arts
AWARD OF MERIT: Cultural
PHOTO BY KEVIN G. REEVES |
The Bethel Woods Center for the Arts is a far cry from Max Yasgur’s farm, the pasture in upstate New York immortalized in 1969 when nearly 500,000 people trekked up Route 17B to Bethel, a small town near Monticello, N.Y., to hear Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Carlos Santana, and dozens of other artists at the Woodstock music festival.
The new $70 million center, which opened in July, doesn’t aim to recreate the mystique of those hallowed grounds of rock and roll; the jerry-rigged staging and portable toilets of the Woodstock festival are long gone. Alan Gerry, a former cable television franchise owner and native of nearby Ferndale, started acquiring parcels in the area in 1996 and broke ground on the new center in 2004 in hopes of giving Sullivan County a new cultural identity.
This summer, the playbill featured diverse artists such as the New York Philharmonic, Boston Pops, Goo Goo Dolls, and even Woodstock veteran Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
“They took the Woodstock site and really turned it into something,” said one judge. “They did a fabulous job here.”
The complex has 17 structures with 127,166 sq. ft. of function space, including a 4,800-seat performance pavilion – with lawn space for an additional 12,000 – and a 1,000-seat outdoor amphitheater. The grounds also house concessions and support facilities.
Like its scruffy predecessor, Bethel Woods is not plugged into a sewer system. The new complex pipes wastewater to a holding tank where the contents are eventually trucked to sewage treatment plants. Future plans would connect Bethel Woods to a nearby treatment facility.
The development team also encountered silty clay soils, poor absorption, and runoff during construction. It built seven separate stormwater management basins in the project area.
Landscaping and site engineering were critical components in meshing the center into the surroundings, with structures fitting into contours of the site and the team using materials and plantings as architectural elements, such as trees that provide shade for parts of the complex and create an “outdoor room” environment. The complex showcases sustainable design strategies, including the use of geothermal systems and a special ventilator in the HVAC units that cuts down on costs by recovering energy from the system’s exhaust and using it to treat new outside air.
Final construction efforts continued through October. A future phase will add a stone and cedar interpretive center for community gatherings, lectures, receptions, and meetings.
Key Players
Owner: Gerry Foundation
Civil Engineer, Landscape Architect: Clough Harbour & Associates
Construction Manager: Suffolk Construction
Architect-Structural Engineer: Westlake Reed Leskosky
Concrete: Villa Construction
Masonry: Sucato Builders
Pond Design-Construction: Joseph Urbani & Associates
Sitework Joint Venture: Servidone; B. Anthony Construction |
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