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Dive Brief:
- Shortcuts taken to speed up renovations at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts have backfired and will mean additional costs to fix the problems, according to former project managers who detailed their concerns in a report of the complainant which was delivered to Congress.
- The rush stemmed from efforts by facility staff to make cosmetic changes to the center in time for President Donald Trump to receive the FIFA Peace Prize of the international soccer body at a ceremony there in December 2025, the report alleges.
- “Instead of making reforms adapted to the real needs of the building, the Center rushed a series of reforms driven by the president’s aesthetic whims and his desire to star in a series of televised events in December,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, DR.I, a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, in a July 9 letter to Matt Floca, the center’s executive director.
Diving knowledge:
Floca was the director of facilities at the Kennedy Center before that Trump named him chief executive in march
In the whistleblower report to the Government Accountability Project provided to Senator Whitehouse, the former project directors allege that the center, under Floca, bypassed the Kennedy Center’s procurement process to use money that Congress appropriated for structural renovations to carry out aesthetic fixes.
For example, the report states that contractors last year used a cheaper, shorter-lasting primer than called for in the contract before repainting the center’s exterior columns. Now the columns must be repainted at an estimated cost of $1.8 million because the rust on the steel columns shows through, he says.
The complainants gave other examples of shoddy or wasteful work: contractors re-sanded and repainted an off-site reflecting pool that will need to be redone because the pool is rusting and the paint is peeling; installing a new floor in the concert hall without taking into account the acoustic requirements of the floor; and the newly installed tile in the presidential box bathrooms was replaced with a different color tile. “Center staff said the White House did not like the beige tile,” Senator Whitehouse said in the letter, citing the whistleblower’s report.
congress allocated $257 million to the Kennedy Center in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The amount is six times what the center normally receives in a year, to help it make progress on overdue repairs and upgrades.
“The Center … made specific funding pledges to Congress,” the letter says, “to use appropriate resources wisely and effectively … to prioritize life safety, affordability and building infrastructure improvements.” [and] reduce and eliminate the backlog of deferred repairs.”
To expedite the work, the center relied on no-bid contracts in violation of the Federal Acquisition Regulation, according to the letter. The center is supposed to get a FAR deviation whenever it uses an untendered contact or bypasses the standards, but it didn’t, he says. The Kennedy Center board later said it no longer followed the standards, the letter said.
The decision to withdraw the center from the FARs has the appearance of a “post hoc” justification for the no-bid contracts, Whitehouse said.
While director of facilities, Floca prepared a report that found the structural work the Kennedy Center needed was substantial enough to warrant closing the facility for two years.
“Work on structural defects in the steel and concrete deck would render ‘main public access points unusable,'” Floca said in the reportaccording to an excerpt that was included in a court decision earlier this year.
In the letter, Whitehouse told Floca to provide the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee with a detailed description of how the $257 million is being spent.
“How much has gone into safety, accessibility and structural infrastructure work, and how much has gone into aesthetic or cosmetic work,” Whitehouse asked.
It also ordered Floca to justify the center’s decision to stop following FAR standards.
“Explain how [the decision] is consistent with the Center’s commitment for fiscal year 2027 to “use appropriate resources prudently and effectively, consistent with federal rules, regulations and executive orders,” Whitehouse said.
The Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
