Irish Arts Center Receives Department of Buildings Clearance to Move into Permanent New Home

Irish Arts Center is marking a momentous milestone this St. Patrick's Day: the NYC Department of Buildings has granted the organization a Temporary Certificate of Occupancy for its state-of-the-art new facility at 726 11th Avenue. The certificate comes as IAC is putting the finishing touches on the new building, which it plans to open this fall when the public is fully vaccinated and the public health environment allows, making a triumphant contribution to the city's cultural resurgence.

Aidan Connolly, Executive Director of Irish Arts Center, said, "Our City's Department of Buildings has an impeccable sense of timing, issuing our much-awaited TCO on the occasion of Ireland's special day. We are so grateful to all our partners in City government for their collaboration and support as we ready a New Irish Arts Center that is both state-of-the-art and safe, and as we prepare to open and operate this magnificent new home this fall, after we're all vaccinated."

Having received the Temporary Certificate of Occupancy, IAC can now begin the next stage of its preparations, as the project team continues to work through hundreds of "punch-list" details. Preparations include loading of lighting and technical equipment, test fits in the building's flexible theater, the completion of facilities trainings and front-of-house systems, operational planning for the ground floor café, and more. Some additional work, including implementation of the most rigorous COVID safety features, will continue through the spring. IAC expects the building to be certified for public assembly by late summer so that the new Center will be able to welcome full audiences when it is safe and allowable to do so, hopefully in autumn 2021.

Designed by Ireland's Office of Public Works (Wexford Opera House) and the New York architects Davis Brody Bond (National September 11 Museum), the New Irish Arts Center culminates a dramatic transformation of the organization. Throughout the project's development, Irish Arts Center has grown from a beloved small Irish theatre in the Off-Off Broadway landscape to a vital, dynamic, inclusive multidisciplinary institution deeply integrated into the cultural ecosystems of Ireland and New York, offering a panoramic view of Irish and Irish-American arts and culture presented in a global context.

The organization has widened the network of artists in its family across disciplines of music, dance, theatre, literature, film, visual arts and interdisciplinary work; and shown how an ethnically-specific institution can promote and practice an intersectional viewpoint, and be a place where one culture and so many others meet, combine, and cross-nourish, and raising now more than $65 million from the City, State, Irish government, private donors, and foundations to support the organization's vision.

The new facility will house a flexible theatre for multidisciplinary performance, installations, residencies and special events; classrooms and studio spaces for community education programs in Irish music, dance, language, history, and the humanities; technology to stream and distribute the Irish Arts Center experience on the digital platform; and a spacious, vibrant, avenue-facing ground-floor café that will be a hospitable hub for conversation and interaction between artists and audiences. With the new building's flexible seating venue accommodating up to 200 (and more for standing events), and the eventual renovation of IAC's historic theatre into a second intimate venue, the institution will be more equipped to present works that vastly range in scope and form.

IAC celebrates St. Patrick's Day today with citywide, national, and international virtual programming, including the 2021 edition of its beloved annual Book Day, featuring cultural and civic leaders from all five boroughs and beyond reading literature from Ireland and the Irish Diaspora, March 17; participation in the Embassy of Ireland, USA's Shades of Green: Celebrating Irish America, hosted by Ambassador of Ireland to the United States Daniel Mulhall, with performances by Nora Brown with Megan Downes, Aoife O'Donovan, and Arturo O'Farrill Quartet with Aedin Moloney, and Jerron "Blind Boy" Paxton; and contributions from Loah, Joanie Madden with Cherish the Ladies, Colum McCann, Paul Muldoon, Tobi Omoteso, and Declan O'Rourke to Culture Ireland's SEODA global online arts festival. Grammy Award winner Aoife O'Donovan's new song and music video "Transatlantic," commissioned as part of IAC's Grásta: Grace in Uncertainty Project, also just premiered.

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