Boca Raton’s Center for Arts and Innovation, an arts-oriented destination planned for the city’s downtown, is marking another milestone by hiring an award-winning architect to transform the project into a globally renowned cultural hub.
The site is projected to break ground in 2025, the city’s centennial year, and will include performance spaces, an entrepreneurial lab and educational spaces.
Renzo Piano is an Italian architect who has designed projects around the world: an airport in Japan, an Amsterdam museum and The New York Times building in New York City. Piano’s firm, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, will begin work on the Boca arts venue in late October.
“The international interest and ultimate selection of one of the world’s greatest design architects underscores not only the global significance of this project, but the enormity of our supporters’ courage, vision, and generosity,” Andrea Virgin, the chairperson and CEO of the center, said in a statement.
Officials gathered Wednesday afternoon at the Mizner Park Amphitheater to formally announce the collaboration. More than 150 people donned in Sunday-best styles gathered for what felt and looked like a wedding ceremony, complete with rows of white chairs facing a stage and music playing in the background. Included in the crowd were donors, current and former city members and state representatives.
Piano himself was not present, but Antoine Chaaya, the partner in charge of the Renzo Piano Building Workshop, was. The firm only accepts two or three architectural commissions annually.
“We are always seduced by culture projects,” Chaaya said. “We need to create a place for people. … (It) will create a real opportunity to create life in the area.”
The center was first conceptualized more than five years ago by Virgin, and the Boca Raton City Council approved the development agreement last year. The site will sit next to the Boca Raton Museum of Art.
“We have been a city very long known for the visionary who was Addison Mizner, we have established our first hundred years as a city on the pillars of this great man,” Virgin said. “Today, we gather to honor that past, but too, just as Mizner did, inspire the future, to build upon those pillars for our greater tomorrow and the architect we selected will undoubtedly do that for us in a way that honors our great heritage.”
The center is expected to generate an economic impact of more than $1 billion to the area along with more than half a million new annual visitors to the city within its first five years. It will have the capacity to hold up to 3,500 seats and host events allowing for nearly 6,000 attendants.
“Cultural infrastructure is known around the world as a major generator of direct and indirect spending,” said Boca Raton Mayor Scott Singer. “With the right support, the Center is poised to serve as cornerstone of the next generation of investment in downtown Boca Raton and beyond as well as further inspire additional investments in our area.”
The project is projected to be completed by late 2028 or early 2029. The total cost is not being revealed, Virgin said.
“This is the next big thing since they built Mizner Park,” said Andrea Levine O’Rourke, a former deputy mayor of Boca.
