Goal: $17.5 million

(including a $500,000 building maintenance fund)

In 2007, Pennsylvania Ballet purchased a cluster of buildings on the corner of Wood and Broad Streets, one-half block north of Vine Street and three blocks north of the newly expanded Pennsylvania Convention Center.
Its goal was to create a lively and vibrant new dance center that would:

• Serve as a visible, permanent headquarters for the Ballet, housing artistic and administrative staffs under one roof.
• Provide five state-of-the-art studios for the professional Company and for the new, pre-professional School of Pennsylvania Ballet.
• Welcome school children into our studios — a new component of our Accent on Dance outreach and education program for school children.
• Offer ample space for the maintenance and storage of costumes.
• Provide affordable rehearsal space for other dance companies.

Thanks to a major challenge grant from Louise and Alan Reed, the Ballet is now poised to break ground on the Louise Reed Center for Dance and plans to open the new School of Pennsylvania Ballet in the fall of 2012. We expect that a satellite school will open in the western suburbs the following year.

Having a permanent home that unites all parts of the Company and provides for an affiliated school will reap enormous financial and artistic benefits for the organization. Moreover, it will enhance the development of the northern end of the Avenue of the Arts, which is rapidly transforming itself into a Center City destination.