By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
SOHO — The Drawing Center has ditched its long-delayed plan to move to lower Manhattan, officials announced Wednesday.
Rather than moving, the SoHo art museum now plans to expand in its current home, at 35 Wooster St., the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. said.
The museum’s decision frees up nearly $7 million in LMDC grant money that the center would have received had it moved, LMDC Chairman Avi Schick said.
At a board meeting Wednesday morning, the LMDC voted to use about $5.9 million of the original Drawing Center allocation to fund other downtown cultural and community enhancement grants. The board also voted to transfer about $900,000 to fund the city’s 9/11 commemoration ceremony.
Julie Menin, an LMDC board member and chairwoman of Community Board 1, strongly praised the move.
"I am glad that there now will be additional funds for the urgent needs of community groups," Menin said after the meeting.
The Drawing Center was once supposed to anchor a new arts complex at the World Trade Center site, but the museum bowed out in 2005 after 9/11 family members protested that its exhibits were too controversial for Ground Zero.
The center then received a $10 million grant from the LMDC to find a new home elsewhere in lower Manhattan and spent about $2 million on preliminary plans, the LMDC said last year. However, none of the potential new sites panned out.
As the years passed, members of the downtown community started to question why the LMDC was sitting on the remaining $8 million of the allocation, when it could go to another use.
The LMDC’s vote still leaves the Drawing Center with over $1 million to grow its space at 35 Wooster St. The five-floor building currently houses condos above the museum.
A spokeswoman for the Drawing Center said only that the museum would elaborate on its plans soon.
