Kimmel animated video cube is OKd, and chef Puck is coming

In what is aimed to be a significant boost to its street presence, the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts is making its first major exterior changes since opening in 2001.

The Kimmel won approval Wednesday from the Zoning Board of Adjustment to erect an animated video cube at its northeast corner, at Broad and Spruce Streets. The kinetic object, whose two screens and audio will show documentary and promotional material, is a project of the Kimmel's Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts (PIFA) this spring. It will begin promoting festival events this winter and will remain operational after the monthlong event ends in May.

Another changing element the Kimmel hopes will redress its often moribund atmosphere: Wolfgang Puck.

The celebrated Austrian-born chef, restaurateur, caterer, and businessman will bring his imprimatur to the Kimmel, joining catering operations - an important piece of the Kimmel's revenue-generating plan - as well as opening a new restaurant.

The previous Kimmel restaurant Cadence, on the second tier of the building, closed in June. Puck's new restaurant will take over the Spruce Street-side space currently occupied by the gift shop. It is expected to open a year from now, in fall 2011, but catering functions will begin this fall in the former Cadence space, and some Puck cuisine will be available at the plaza cafe.

Puck's presence comes in the form of an existing partnership with Restaurant Associates, the Kimmel's current food-service vendor, like the one they have at the Newseum in Washington. Restaurant Associates will continue its relationship with the Kimmel and as a tenant in its basement kitchen.

Both the new video cube (which is a 71/2-by-71/2-by- 71/2-foot, three-dimensional realization of the festival's logo) and the opening of a ground-floor restaurant are philosophically consistent with the Kimmel's drive to enliven its public spaces. Various architects and urban planners, as well as a 2008 public charrette run by PennPraxis, a Penn-related nonprofit planning authority, have cited the Kimmel's lack of vibrancy, particularly when no performances are taking place.

"The outside of the building must let the public see, hear and feel what is happening inside the building," one of the PennPraxis proposals concluded. "The outside, now seen as foreboding, dull and confusing, should broadcast a sense of excitement and activity onto the street."

The new video cube, although not specifically called for during the 2008 brainstorming session, is a response to "bringing the outside in, and the inside out," Kimmel president Anne Ewers said Wednesday.

"It completely connects with the vision of the master plan," she said. "The restaurant moving to the space in the gift shop is what's in the master plan, the need for a greater sense of what's going on inside the building at Broad and Spruce ties directly to the cube design. It's wanting for people to be more aware, to be more welcome, to be more drawn into the building."

In addition to promoting Kimmel Center Presents events and those of the resident companies, the cube could be used to electronically convey live events going on inside the Kimmel, such as Philadelphia Orchestra concerts, lawyer Matthew N. McClure of Ballard Spahr told zoning board members.

The budget for the cube, whose fabricators have not yet been chosen, is expected to run between $200,000 and $400,000, depending on whether the Kimmel can land in-kind services in lieu of some expenses. It should be operational by December or January, said PIFA executive director J. Edward Cambron.

The cube, with two screens, will also emit audio, which, in accordance with a proviso that is part of the Zoning Board of Adjustment's approval, will be audible no more than 15 feet from the source.

Ewers said the new restaurant, as yet unnamed, would serve lunch and dinner and be open all the time, unlike Cadence, which was open only around Verizon Hall performance days and times. The kitchen will continue to be in the basement, and the route for getting food from the kitchen to the new restaurant has not been worked out, Ewers said.

The gift shop will remain open through the holidays. After that, a scaled-down gift-shop kiosk is to be placed in the plaza.

The Kimmel hopes the addition of the Puck name, along with a planned enclosure of the Kimmel's rooftop garden, will make the Kimmel more rentable for outside events - and, hence, sweeten the earned-revenue line of the Kimmel's balance sheet.

"We certainly think it's a terrific name in the industry - he's a world-renowned chef," Ewers said of Puck. "This would be his first location in Philadelphia, and we think it will have wonderful appeal to folks interested in renting the Kimmel Center."