Princeton gets gift, Cleveland a knock
Cleveland philanthropist Peter B. Lewis demonstrated his love for Princeton University on Saturday with a $101 million gift aimed at sharply improving arts education at his alma mater.
The donation cheered advo cates of the arts and education in Cleveland and raised the perennial hope that Lewis, who has donated tens of millions to local causes in the past, would continue to be generous in his hometown.
But Lewis nearly dismissed the possibility.
In a telephone interview Saturday, he said he is unimpressed by major local projects such as the $258 million expansion and renovation of the Cleveland Museum of Art and Case Western Reserve University's efforts to turn a moribund area of shops and apartments at Euclid Avenue and Mayfield Road into a bustling Arts and Retail District.
"Cleveland is not high on my list because it's all palaver," Lewis said, speaking by phone from Princeton.
Lewis was attending meetings as a university trustee.
“It’s individual palaver. It’s people not cooperating with one another. There’s no apparent leader to the enterprise,” Lewis said.
Lewis’ gift to Princeton, the biggest in the university’s history, will pay for artists’ residencies, expanded course offerings and a new complex for the study and presentation of the creative and performing arts. In all, Lewis has donated $220 million to Princeton.
Lewis drew a contrast between the university, where he feels his donations will produce results, and Cleveland, where he feels “money won’t do a bit of good.”
Lewis, chairman of Mayfieldbased Progressive Corp., the nation’s third largest auto insurer, has developed a national reputation for holding charitable organizations to high standards of performance.
He resigned from the board of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York last year to highlight his displeasure over the institution’s direction and management.
In Cleveland in 2002, he announced a one-person moratorium against all local charities to protest what he called Case’s mismanagement of design and construction of the Weatherhead School of Management building.
Lewis had donated $37 million for the building, designed by Los Angeles architect Frank Gehry.
Lewis resumed donating to local causes a year later with donations of $100,000 each to Cuyahoga Community College and Spaces Gallery.
But he blasted local institutions in November 2004 at the annual meeting of University Circle Inc., the nonprofit development corporation for Cleveland’s cultural and educational district.
Since that meeting, Case has assembled nearly eight acres at the strategic intersection of Euclid Avenue and Mayfield Road in University Circle and launched plans for the Arts and Retail District. In December, the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland announced it would join the project and build an iconic building as its centerpiece.
Lewis donated $100,000 last year to University Circle Inc. to enhance planning for the Case project and other ventures in the district. But he said he’s unimpressed with the results so far.
“I’m not knocking it. God bless them,” he said. “They got a building there. Great. There’s a lot of beautiful buildings. So — what?
It’s still a dead neighborhood.
Until that neighborhood comes alive, Cleveland doesn’t have a prayer. That’s the real bottom line.”
Exaggerating to make his point, Lewis said Case and other institutions should “collaborate to develop restaurants, movie theaters, poolhouses, whorehouses and bars in the University Circle neighborhood.” But he said, “People don’t want to believe what I say . Nothing’s changed.”
Cultural and educational leaders in Cleveland are well acquainted with Lewis’ views. But they said they didn’t see a connection between his generosity to Princeton and whether he would support local projects. They also said Clevelanders would have to work harder to win his favor.
“Do I have hope Peter would support the museum? Of course I have hope,” said Michael Horvitz, chairman of the Cleveland Museum of Art. “He has shown himself to be an exceptionally generous person. If people want to be the object of his bounty, they have to show they’re deserving of it.”
Case President Edward Hundert called Lewis “one of the most generous philanthropists alive. It’s inspirational to see his support for these wonderful causes.”
Hundert also said, “I’m always hopeful Peter and other philanthropists could make the city [of Cleveland] better.”
Jill Snyder, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, said that Lewis’ gift to Princeton “proves once again, Peter Lewis is a remarkable philanthropist.”
As for her own museum project and other ventures in Cleveland, Snyder said, “I know he’s paying attention. That’s the point. I know he’s paying attention.”
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: slitt@plaind.com, 216-999-4136