Gund to redesign Dreamland
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER
The Nantucket Dreamland Foundation has hired renowned architect Graham Gund to draw the plans for the revival of the downtown movie theater. Gund, a Cleveland, Ohio native, has a residence on Nantucket.

Gund has yet to draw anything more than rough sketches of what the theater might look like for the benefit of the foundation.

"He's probably built 20 theaters around the country," said foundation principal Philippe Laffont. "Graham has been around the island for a long time."

Gund is president of the Gund Partnership, an architectural firm focusing on American "situationist" architecture that he founded in Cambridge, Mass. in 1971.

Theaters drawn by the Gund partnership include the Harrison Opera House in Norfolk, Va. and The North Shore Center for Performing Arts in Skokie, Ill., and the Lansburg Theater for the Shakespeare Folger Library in Washington, D.C.

Other buildings include the conservatory for the Cleveland Botanical Garden, the headquarters for the National Association of Realtors in Washington, D.C., buildings at Harvard University and Kenyon College, and historic redevelopment projects, including Bulfinch Square in Cambridge, Mass., and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, Mass.

PHOTOS BY ROBERT K. JAMES Architect Graham Gund is expected to help breathe new life into the long-dormant the Dreamland Theatre on South Water Street.

He completed his undergraduate studies at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and postgraduate work at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Arts.

He also earned a master of architecture and a master of architecture in urban design from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

In a deal orchestrated by Peter Palandjian, chairman and CEO of the Brighton, Mass. development firm Intercontinental Developers, Laffont, founder of Coatue Management in New York City, James Pallotta, a part owner of the Boston Celtics, and Starwood Capital CEO Barry Sternlicht purchased the Dreamland Theater from Dreamland Theater ZMG, LLC, for $9.8 million on Oct. 3. The trio of summer residents then announced that they would be restoring the movie theater on the ground floor of the 177-yearold building and that they planned to gather community input to help them decide how to best use the second and third floors.

The foundation has yet to explore how the theater will be used beyond showing movies. Possible uses of the properties at 17 South Water St. and the parking lot at 18 Easy St. include community arts presentations and summer convention space on the second and third floors for island theater and arts groups. Laffont did offer that a one-story building could be built on part of the parking lot behind the Dreamland to serve as an interactive studio that could be used by TV networks and island people, possibly a second island teen center or as classroom space.

Earlier this month, Patty Roggeveen was hired to be the foundation's executive director.

"I think the general principle behind this is we want to do something that is good for the community 12 months a year because they [the investors] are so thankful for what they got out of the theater," said Laffont, referring to the movies that investors and their families have seen over the years.

With Gund and Roggeveen on board, Laffont said that he, Schmidt, Pallotta and Sternlicht will be stepping back from the project a bit after the foundation's first board meeting is held in the coming weeks to let Roggeveen probe the island community as to how the Dreamland property should be used.

"The pieces are in place and what we now need to do is reach out to the community and see what the building could be," Laffont said.

In a perfect world, Laffont said the foundation would like to reopen the theater in 2009, but he could not commit to that deadline.

"The move after getting the architect was getting Patty on board and we also have a project manager and that is Will Smith," said Laffont who added that Smith, who works for Palandjian as Director of Development and Construction, is working pro bono

for the foundation. I