Future home for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra still undecided

Tomorrow is another day for the Woodruff Arts Center’s board of directors, who on Wednesday afternoon did not have a sufficient quorum to vote on the location for a future home for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

The 78-member board meets twice yearly, and the agenda Wednesday was a large and important one, including a presentation on a 25-year master plan for the arts center calling for construction of a concert hall for the ASO on the Woodruff campus.

Woodruff leaders were hoping for smooth passage of the plan, developed by Boston-based Sasaki Associates, which they believe holds the promise of resurrecting the decadelong drive to replace acoustically inferior Symphony Hall.

The meeting started at 3:30 p.m., but it was nearly 6 p.m. by the time the master plan presentation was complete, and attendance had thinned.

“It was enthusiastically endorsed by the board members there,” said Woodruff vice president Virginia Vann, declining to identify how many were in attendance at the beginning or end.

Center leaders next will consult with legal counsel to review the bylaws and determine another process for taking a vote.

The delay seems symbolic of the long struggle to erect a sleek architectural statement to reflect the ASO’s growing ambitions.

In 2005, the ASO unveiled celebrated Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava’s dramatic, $300 million vision for Symphony Center, to be built on a site at 14th Street and Peachtree, a block south of the Woodruff. But some potential donors disapproved of the site, in which the hall would have been encircled by high-rises, one impeding the view from Peachtree. Some leaders considered it too costly.

The new master plan would place the concert hall atop Callaway Plaza at Peachtree and 15th streets and connect to the arts center’s basement. That would allow a 2,000-seat hall to fit.

It’s not clear if Calatrava will be involved in the new site.

Woodruff president and CEO Joe Bankoff said that he was confident that donors, who had committed $114 million to the Calatrava project before fund-raising was halted two years ago, would support the change of location.

But Penny McPhee, president of the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, which has made the largest private pledge, at $35 million, said Wednesday the foundation was in a “wait-and-see mode” in terms of its commitment.

“Now we all need to work together,” she said, “to ensure that the hall’s architectural design does justice to a world-class orchestra.”