Boats! Catwalks! Persian Gulf Outposts! A Trump Trustee Has Big Plans For The Kennedy Center

For all his bluster about what was supposedly wrong with the Kennedy Center, Donald Trump has offered few specifics about what he plans to do with the place now that he’s taken over. Trump’s friend and fellow Kennedy Center trustee Paolo Zampolli, on the other hand, has a lot to say.

Zampolli, a modeling agency honcho turned real estate player Trump put on the center’s board in 2020, has spent years pushing for Trumpian upgrades to Washington’s marble temple of high culture: He wants a marina for boat parking and water taxis outside; a Cipriani restaurant upstairs; international outposts in Europe, Asia and the Middle East; live collaborations between the Center and astronauts in orbit; and a revenue stream from lounges sponsored by countries like Qatar and Turkey, among others.

Oh, and he thinks the Center’s grand hallway would make a terrific catwalk, too. “We’re talking a high-level fashion show. Who doesn’t like that?” Zampolli told me this week. “Do it in the main hallway. 1,500 people. Three rows. It’s like a fashion runway. You could sell tickets and then do a gala upstairs for the VIPs.”

“I see the Center like La Scala of Milano,” he added, speaking in a lilting Italian accent. “So luxurious. So prestigious.”

It’s a vision of the Kennedy Center that’s dramatically different from the one that has for a half-century been a magnet for earnest fans of classical music. But it’s also different from the future evoked by the gallows humor of liberals who think Trump’s takeover will mean monster truck rallies in the opera house or stripper poles in the Eisenhower Theater.

And it’s worth paying attention to not because Zampolli’s running the show — officially, he’s just a trustee — but because his Manhattanite idea of glitz likely tracks pretty closely with that of the president, whom Zampolli is credited with introducing to his future wife, Melania, at New York’s Kit Kat Club.

Zampolli’s tenure at the Kennedy Center began near the end of Trump’s first term, after the longtime New York tabloid fixture had relocated to a Georgetown residence decorated with a giant oil painting of Trump. In those days, he said, he regularly found himself walking to the Center from Fiola Mare, the scene-y waterfront restaurant.

It was a frustrating walk, Zampolli said, requiring a trip beneath an overpass and a scamper around traffic. So he had an idea: What about a boat? That way, visitors to the cultural palace could ride in style between Georgetown restaurants and the new marina he wanted built outside the Kennedy Center’s marble edifice.

“It’s not that difficult,” said Zampolli, who remained on the board through the Biden years. “Why do all the people have to just stop their boats in front of Fiola Mare?”

But it never got done. And Zampolli thinks he knows why: The “idiotic” bureaucracy slow-walked the notion. “They are a waste of space, waste of time,” he said. “How many times can you chase people to give them the most amazing idea? Remember, after all, it's about bringing people to the Center.”

Now that there’s new management in place, Zampolli — who goes by “Ambassador” thanks to his service as a U.N. envoy from Dominica — anticipates less foot-dragging about “all the amazing idea proposals that were neglected.”

Consider the fashion show. Zampolli envisions a tribute to Jacqueline Kennedy via a show of clothing by Valentino, the great Italian designer who dressed the late first lady. He knows the man and is sure he’d be on board. “He was the tailor of my mother,” Zampolli said of the 93-year-old fashion legend.

In addition to bringing the world to the Kennedy Center, Zampolli wants to bring the Kennedy Center to the world via franchises and partnerships.

“One of the things I worked really hard [on] was to franchise the name,” Zampolli said. “Very simple, like the Louvre in Abu Dhabi,” where the Parisian museum established its United Arab Emirates outpost in 2007. “I don’t know the financial details, but for sure it was a lucrative operation — and advancing the brand.”

Zampolli would also like to import some better brands to the Kennedy Center. Noting that the building’s roof offers stunning views, he thinks it’s time to bring in a high-end “beautiful restaurant” to the building’s upper-level eatery. In a Feb. 10 email to since-ousted Center President Deborah Rutter, he suggested Cipriani, the Italian hotel and leisure company.

“It’s very bad, disgusting,” Zampolli said of the current dining options. When Zampolli staged a Kennedy Center fundraiser for his clean-oceans charity, he said, “I think they went to Costco to buy the plate of cheese.” And don’t get him started about the beverages. “These idiots! They put in wine vending machines. Wine vending machines! In this beautiful hall.”

As a real estate guy, Zampolli is always looking to expand, and when it comes to the Kennedy Center, his attention is focused on Theodore Roosevelt Island, a well-loved piece of local parkland that’s currently crisscrossed by walking trails. “A cemetery for trees,” Zampolli said of the memorial to the conservation-minded president. He proposed a bridge between the Center and the island. “We have to clean it up,” he said. He also told me the Center should start its own arts academy.

On the other hand, Zampolli is enthusiastic about the actual Kennedy Center building, designed by the late architect Edward Durell Stone and derided by some locals as a giant pizza box on the Potomac. One Zampolli proposal calls for getting the Center designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site. (This could be complicated for Trump, who took the U.S. out of the U.N. cultural body in 2017.)

To his credit, in our conversations Zampolli stuck to real estate, fashion and spectacle. He didn’t try to play the cultural critic about the actual programming at the facility. He also had nice things to say about David Rubenstein, the philanthropy titan who Trump ousted from the chairmanship. “I’m not a music director,” he said. “I’m not the biggest expert on opera. But I understand the potential of the Kennedy Center to make it into the real deal.”

Officially, that job now falls to Ric Grenell, a longtime Trump loyalist with minimal history running an arts organization. Zampolli pronounces himself confident. “Ambassador Grenell, like me, is a true soldier of the president,” he said. That same admiration for Trump was on display in a Jan. 5 email he sent Rutter suggesting that, in honor of the upcoming inauguration, they serve Diet Coke and McDonald’s instead of sushi in the Center’s cafe. Rutter replied that they already served Diet Coke, hamburgers and fries.

But in our conversations, Zampolli actually stayed away from partisan rhetoric and culture-war broadsides. Whatever else you can say about his ideas for the Kennedy Center, they avoid the snarling tone of the takeover, which prompted Steve Bannon to suggest that the Center host a Jan. 6 prisoners’ chorus. (There was more outrage this week following the disappearance of a scheduled Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington concert from the calendar.)

Of course, “not staging pro wrestling matches at the Kennedy Center” doesn’t necessarily equate to “good stewardship of a national treasure.”

The real risk to the Kennedy Center from the political tumult is financial. Uncle Sam kicked in only about $44 million of the Center’s $268 million budget last year. The rest comes either from donations raised by the board or from tickets purchased by the general public. Which is problematic because, on the one hand, Trump as board chair doesn’t have nearly the record of philanthropic fundraising as the legendary benefactor Rubenstein. And, on the other hand, it’s all too easy to imagine a damaging chunk of ticket-buyers steering clear of subscriptions to a facility that has now acquired a strong political charge.

Will fashion-show tickets or boat parking fees or upscale wine service make up for the loss of ordinary classical music tickets that have been the lifeblood of the place? I wouldn’t count on it. Though I did admire the moxie of Zampolli’s idea about sending artworks into orbit and then auctioning them off to raise money.

And in a season of apocalyptic predictions, it’s nice to hear anyone talk of an institution as permanent. “Trust me,” Zampolli said. “My Center is not going anywhere. Your Center is not going anywhere. Our Center is not going anywhere.”