Opened in 2021 on the Spui in The Hague, Amare is an impressive culture palace, but there is no money to program performances that fit such a building. And that’s a flaw. During development and construction, there was systematically not enough attention for the rather crucial question of the use of the building: what cultural offer, for whom, and for what money? The College, the civil service and the city council were negligent in this.
That is one of the shocking conclusions drawn by the committee of inquiry of the city council of The Hague after 15 months of research into the dramatic development and construction of Amare in The Hague, which houses the Residentie Orkest, the Nederlands Dans Theater and the Royal Conservatory. It is the first time that the city council of The Hague uses the toughest investigative tool that a city council has.
Misleading
Another conclusion; one of the reasons Amare was overpriced and overdue is that the decision to build the property (including a wishful thinking budget and an equally unrealistic time schedule) was a tough political compromise. It was not a decision “based on a thorough analysis”, the committee concludes. It was ‘not sufficiently elaborated whether the political choices made are feasible and/or desirable’, and even afterwards there appeared to be ‘no more room for a serious discussion or reconsideration’.
Opposing views from civil servants or external experts were not welcome, and the majority of the council was too docile. The committee concludes that a so-called alderman culture had emerged: what the alderman wants, happens.
With Amare, the public in The Hague will receive a brilliant Gothic palace of culture
It also appears that the municipal council actively misled the municipal council and failed to inform it sufficiently on other points. For example, it remained unclear in the communication that the maintenance costs of 44 million euros over the term of the contract were on top of the 177 million euros in construction and development costs, and that the Royal Conservatoire cannot pay enough rent. According to the committee, it was directly misleading that the Board deliberately presented too high sponsorship amounts that the cultural institutions would bring in. Incidentally, the committee is very critical of the role of the municipal council, which has taken an insufficiently ‘dualistic’ attitude.
These are some of the main conclusions of the 800-page report Amare: Special Complex that committee chairman and municipal councilor Arjen Dubbelaar offered to mayor Jan van Zanen on Friday. With the “recommendation” to read the summary and chapter nine, and the “challenge” to go through it all – the result of 82 interviews, 47 interrogations and the review of 5,800 documents.
![](https://images.nrc.nl/a3uL9r6m3Y4RLDJPtCQTy8Z1E4g=/1280x/filters:no_upscale()/s3/static.nrc.nl/images/gn4/stripped/data105015111-873e85.jpg|https://images.nrc.nl/CK1J6hVp2-t1QJPyWs1Uxhx9XUo=/1920x/filters:no_upscale()/s3/static.nrc.nl/images/gn4/stripped/data105015111-873e85.jpg|https://images.nrc.nl/H8YQxhqV5HTUE4_cf7MFhAw4UwQ=/5760x/filters:no_upscale()/s3/static.nrc.nl/images/gn4/stripped/data105015111-873e85.jpg)
Photo ROBIN UTRECHT / ANP
Municipal administration
Now that the report has been published, the municipal council must decide how it wants to proceed with Amare. Is the municipality prepared to pay for cultural programming that fits the building? So far, Amare has cost the municipality 520 million euros; 265 million has already been spent, 255 are fixed future expenses such as interest, maintenance and contractual obligations. But in order to get the programming up to standard, extra subsidies from the institutions are needed every year, of at least 1 million euros per year, up to 4.8 million euros per year for a more ambitious variant. Half a million is also needed to bring about the desired cooperation between the institutions and to involve citizens more. The total financial burden would therefore rise to between 548 and 658 million euros.
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