Kennedy Center repairs were rushed, shoddy, whistleblowers allege

Dive Brief:

Shortcuts taken to speed renovations to the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts have had poor results and will incur additional costs to remedy the problems, according to former project managers who detailed their concerns in a whistleblower report that was provided to Congress.
The rush stemmed from facility staff’s effort to make cosmetic changes to the center in time for President Donald Trump to receive the FIFA Peace Prize from the international soccer organization at a December 2025 ceremony there, the report alleges.
“Instead of pursuing renovations tailored to the building’s actual needs, the Center rushed a series of renovations driven by the President’s aesthetic whims and his desire to star in a series of televised events in December,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I, ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, said in a July 9 letter to Matt Floca, the center’s executive director.

Dive Insight:

Floca was the Kennedy Center’s facilities director before Trump named him executive director in March.

In the whistleblower report to the Government Accountability Project that it provided to Sen. Whitehouse, the former project managers allege the center, under Floca, bypassed the Kennedy Center’s procurement process to use money that Congress appropriated for structural renovations to undertake cosmetic fixes.

For example, the report states that contractors last year used a cheaper, shorter-lasting primer than what was called for in the contract before repainting the center’s exterior columns. Now the columns must be repainted at an estimated $1.8 million cost because rust from the steel columns is showing through, it says.

The whistleblowers gave other examples of shoddy or wasteful work: Contractors resanded and painted a reflecting pool outside the facility that will need to be redone because the pool is rusting and the paint is peeling; installed a new floor in the concert hall without taking into account the acoustical requirements of the flooring; and replaced newly installed tile in the presidential box bathrooms with a different color of tile. “Center staff were told the White House disliked the beige tile,” Sen. Whitehouse said in the letter, drawing on the whistleblower report.

Congress appropriated $257 million for the Kennedy Center in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The amount is six times what the center typically gets in a year, intended to help it make headway on backlogged repairs and upgrades.

“The Center … made specific funding promises to Congress,” the letter says, “to ‘prudently and efficiently utilize the appropriated resources … to prioritize life-safety, accessibility, and building infrastructure improvement’ [and] reduce and eliminate the backlog of deferred repairs.”

To speed 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 a non-bid contact or otherwise bypasses the standards, but it did not do so, it states. Later, the Kennedy Center’s board said it was no longer following the standards, the letter said.

The decision to remove the center from FAR has the appearance of a “post hoc” justification for the no-bid contracts, Whitehouse said.

While he was facilities director, 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 the structural steel and concrete deck defects would render the ‘primary public access points unusable’,” Floca said in the report, according to an excerpt that was included in a court decision earlier this year.

In the letter, Whitehouse directed Floca to provide the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee a detailed description of how the $257 million is being spent.

“How much has gone to life-safety, accessibility, and structural-infrastructure work, and how much to cosmetic or aesthetic work,” Whitehouse asked.

He also directed Floca to provide a rationale for the center’s decision to stop following FAR standards.

“Explain how [the decision] is consistent with the Center’s FY 2027 commitment to ‘prudently and efficiently utilize the appropriated resources, in accordance with federal rules, regulations, and executive orders,’” Whitehouse said.

The Kennedy Center didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.