Judge Orders 30 Days Notice Before Any Demolition at the Kennedy Center

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Kennedy Center to give 30 days’ notice before making any major physical change to its main building, including tearing it down, as the standoff over President Donald Trump’s name at the institution moved from the plaza to the courtroom. The news was first reported by The New York Times.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper said the directive was meant to head off any confusion in light of recent events, among them the abrupt closure of the building to the public on Wednesday, the Associated Press reported. Cooper declined to schedule the emergency hearing that Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, had sought. Instead he ordered the defendants in her suit, Trump among them, to file a detailed status report backed by a sworn declaration from a knowledgeable representative of the center describing the closure and the emergency repairs, and to notify Beatty in writing of any planned demolition.

The ruling followed a morning of filings on both sides. Lawyers for the center told Cooper that shutting the main building was urgently necessary to protect the public after a five-foot section of plaster came down from a ceiling during a recent storm, the New York Times reported. Justice Department attorneys argued there was no emergency created by a temporary closure, and said the real risk would have been keeping the building fully open before a safety assessment.

Executive Director Matt Floca, in a sworn declaration, said the closure is set to last seven days while officials evaluate the scope of the problem, with any extension weighed week by week. He said other sections of ceiling show water damage, and he has pointed to structural steel corroded by water infiltration and outdated stage equipment among the building’s maintenance needs. In a video posted this week, Floca said the effort is not about demolition but about protecting the building’s future.

Beatty’s attorneys took a different reading. They told the court the temporary framing is a pretext for a permanent shutdown, and asked Cooper to state plainly that his earlier order barring closure also bars demolition. Their filing cited two developments from Wednesday: Trump’s remark to reporters that the center would close and end up being “ripped down” without recognition for his administration, and a photograph taken aboard Air Force One showing the president reviewing what appeared to be a rendering of the building being demolished.

Cooper ruled in May that the Trump-aligned board had unlawfully renamed the institution, and separately blocked a plan to close the building for two years of renovations on the grounds that the board had not adequately vetted it. The main building houses the Opera House, the Concert Hall and the Eisenhower Theater.