After more than fifty years, music center De Oosterpoort, known for Noorderslag and as home base of the North Netherlands Orchestra, is outdated, according to the municipality of Groningen and SPOT, the organization behind De Oosterpoort and the Stadsschouwburg Groningen. The building is too small, not sustainable and not practical. Renovation is not an option.
In six fully booked meetings, the municipality and SPOT will explain in the coming weeks why they want a new music center and what it should look like. A new music center has been under consideration for five years, with TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht as an example, but now the plans have become concrete.
It should be called the Nieuwe Poort and should have four halls: a classical hall especially for the North Netherlands Orchestra (NNO), one for all music genres, one for intimate settings and small theater performances, and a large one with 3,200 standing places “for amplified music and celebrate”. The current Great Hall has room for 2,000 visitors. As a result, many major artists skip Groningen, said director Nynke Stellingsma during the first meeting last week, where interested parties were updated about the plans.
Deprecated
In a slide show with photos of De Oosterpoort, Marc Floor of the Social Development Directorate of the municipality of Groningen showed the shortcomings of De Oosterpoort during the meeting. The basement, where the installations are outdated, the crowds at the exit and the Great Hall were passed by. “It is a very nice building and it is quite difficult to say goodbye to it. But the building is finished. The roofs and walls are not well insulated. It has single glazing and high energy consumption. There is far too little storage space and too few changing rooms,” says Floor.
The Great Hall must be converted almost daily from a hall for classical music to a hall suitable for pop concerts, Stellingsma explains. “When the orchestra has finished rehearsing, the wooden walls have to be changed, the covers turned down, the chairs taken out, the stage raised and the lamps and lights hung in the hood for the pop concert that evening. The whole party goes back in the evening, because the NNO has to go back in the next morning. That can really be done smarter. A venue just for pop music is the missing link.”
The North Netherlands Orchestra also notes “with pain in our hearts” that “our home base of De Oosterpoort can no longer last,” general director Liesbeth Kok and artistic director Marcel Mandos write in an open letter to the mayor and aldermen of Groningen. “The pressure on the Main Hall is great, which means that it is insufficiently available for the NNO and supply is lost for Groningen. A future-proof music building with an acoustic hall, the only one in the entire Northern Netherlands, is essential for Groningen and the Northern Netherlands.”
Make a difference
Jenny Burgstra (54) asks the most questions of all visitors during the meeting. She is an avid concertgoer and travels all over the country for performances. “I’m so crazy for doing that. But above Zwolle it ends for many people. A large hall in Groningen will make the difference. Then it is attractive for artists to come to Groningen.”
The new building should open in 2030 and should preferably be located behind the Main Station. De Suikerzijde, a site just outside the city center, is the other option. For the NNO, the station area would be the only suitable location. “A central and easily accessible location in the city contributes to our image as a top orchestra,” say Kok and Mandos.
The Groningen municipal council is expected to decide on the plans in November. The outcome is not certain. The biggest breaking point seems to be the costs. The municipality now estimates the costs at more than 300 million euros. An example of what not to do is Amare in The Hague, says Marc Floor of the municipality of Groningen. Many things went wrong during the development and construction of that cultural center. It cost tens of millions more than promised. “We can mainly learn from that what we can do better here,” says Floor.
Bad plan
But there are also residents of Groningen who would like to see De Oosterpoort preserved. On the municipality’s website, Groningen residents can indicate what they consider important for the new cultural center. In the responses, many residents argue in favor of preserving and renovating De Oosterpoort.
One of the advocates for the preservation of De Oosterpoort is Peter Michiel Schaap of GRAS, the architecture center for and of Groningen: “It is a very bad plan on all sides, which will cost a lot of money,” says Schaap: “It is a very outdated solution to put everything together.”
Schaap advocates the preservation of De Oosterpoort, with a new, large hall for pop music on the Suikerzijde. “The Oosterpoort does not have monumental status, but it could be that way. There are few of these types of cultural centers from the early 1970s left. It has a very good classical concert hall. You should never demolish a building that has so much value.”
Schaap calls it nonsense that De Oosterpoort cannot be renovated. “Every building can be renovated. It bothers me immensely. It is a careless handling of existing heritage.”