Turning the Kimmel into a pick-up spot?

New York's Lincoln Center is embarking on a major overhaul aimed at making that cultural cloister more welcoming to the public and repairing some of its original architectural missteps. And now, it looks like Philadelphia's Kimmel Center will soon start down the same path.

The big difference, of course, is that Lincoln Center is approaching its 50th anniversary, while the Kimmel was completed barely six years ago. The construction bills haven't even been paid off yet.

The two renovations say a lot about the problems of performing-arts centers. Once, concert halls were simple, single-purpose places. You arrived shortly before the house lights dimmed and dashed for the exits after the curtain went down. No one expected much more than a good show.

The creation of Lincoln Center, considered the mother of all performing-arts centers, imposed new obligations on such venues. They're now required to offer life and activity off-stage, too, and to do so during those times of day when people aren't normally inclined to visit a theater. Their expanded role is part of the continuing democratization of high culture. But making the hybrid spaces work has not been easy, especially on Philadelphia's still-evolving Avenue of the Arts.

Rafael Vinoly's Kimmel design sure doesn't help matters. Despite the transparent snow-globe roof that vaults dramatically over its two theaters, the Kimmel is an opaque fortress where it counts most - on the ground. Because people can't see into the building, they're leery about venturing inside.

Vinoly once told me that the Kimmel's success should be judged on whether it became a great pick-up spot. It's as good a measure as any for evaluating his building. Yet it's hard to imagine anyone lucking upon a potential love interest in the desolate tundra of its lobby.

The Kimmel just can't seem to get people to visit its iconic home for anything other than scheduled performances. Its bars, cafes and shop, which were intended to support its sun-filled plaza as an all-day hangout, now open their doors only for those events.

Though the design flaws were evident from Day 1, the Kimmel's management was always reluctant to acknowledge them. But last summer, a new team took over and hired Penn Praxis to study the problems. The nonprofit research group, which just wrote a recovery strategy for another seemingly lost cause, the Delaware riverfront, is now conducting a series of in-depth focus groups in collaboration with The Inquirer's Great Expectations project.

I observed one of those discussions Sunday. It was intelligent, as well as cathartic. There was complete agreement among the participants that the architecture "fails to communicate" what's inside.

The Kimmel's flaws are as clear as its arcing roof. They aren't minor, though. The question now is whether the management can muster the commitment - and the public money - for the extreme interventions necessary to set things right.

Natalye Paquin, the Kimmel's chief operating officer, insists the management is open to all ideas, big and small.

Some are no-brainers that could be implemented in a matter of months: better sofas where you can actually start up a conversation; seasonal decorations to enliven the atrium's huge volume of negative space; more signs; a more affordable restaurant menu; a cafe cart on the rooftop garden. And how about putting a sign and menu for the second-floor Cadence restaurant on the Kimmel's outside wall, so people will know the eatery exists?

Other improvements are more tricky, like breaking down those forbidding walls. Unless the building finds a way to lure people, it won't have a prayer of meeting the pick-up test.

Right now, blank brick walls run for long stretches on the Kimmel's three public sides, Broad, Spruce and 15th Streets. The few street-level windows that exist are either frosted or curtained. Worst of all, Vinoly squandered the site's greatest asset, its Broad Street corner. He marks the high-energy spot where the city's pedestrian grid converges with a dull, black granite cube that houses, of all things, a work room for the box office.

So tear down that wall. Explode the cube. Un-frost the windows. Several participants in Sunday's discussion suggested that the center's cafe should be visible from the street. One way to realize that fine idea is to relocate the box office, which now backs onto a frosted Spruce Street window, and replace it with an affordable restaurant.

If the cube and the Spruce Street wall were turned to glass, then you'd have an inviting eatery, one that could presumably conduct a profitable trade from morning to midnight. Presto! Folks without tickets would have a reason to enter the Kimmel.

The key is to think big. Don't just substitute glass for brick. Hold an architectural competition. That would promise the possibility of a fresh, fun design that could reinvigorate the entire arts center, and create public excitement in the bargain.

Philadelphia is now a less timid place architecturally than it was in 2001, so the new wall needn't slavishly respect Vinoly's original design vision. It shouldn't be oblivious to it, either. There's some geometric logic in Vinoly's composition.

At the same time, it's worth asking ourselves how things went so wrong at the Kimmel. It was the first of six major civic buildings (Independence Visitors' Center, the two new stadiums, etc.) started during the Rendell administration. All suffer to varying degrees from the same off-putting feeling on their ground floors.

The city is now about to embark on another spate of monument building with the Free Library, the Barnes Foundation, the National Jewish Museum, and an addition to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Perhaps this time, the Kimmel can demonstrate how to make a public building feel really public.