The underground tours have left donors and congressmen with “surprise across the board,” as they ask questions such as “How did we get to this point?” said Matt Floca, the executive director and chief operating officer of the Kennedy Center.

The Washington Examiner went on one of these same underground tours on Wednesday for an inside look at the structural damage that led to President Donald Trump‘s decision to close the building for two years. Here is what to know about the damage and how the performing arts center came to the decision to close.

TRUMP SAYS $200 MILLION KENNEDY CENTER ‘MAINTENANCE’ WON’T MEAN ‘RIPPING IT DOWN’

What is some of the structural damage at the Kennedy Center?

The structural damage at the Kennedy Center, which the president’s handpicked Board of Trustees recently voted to rename the Trump-Kennedy Center, spans from the building’s inner bowels to its exterior facade.

Most of the issues stem from water damage, whether it comes from poorly placed planters that have degraded the concrete around expansion joints on the campus or miscontrolled rainwater that has eroded the walls surrounding the center’s electrical vaults.

The water damage has also affected waterproofing around the steel in the building at points near the entrance to the hall of states, where it supports the river plaza nearby, and where the structure hangs over Rock Creek Parkway.

“The steel is corroding, and this is the structure that supports the river plaza,” a Kennedy Center official said during the tour stop in the parking garage. “A lack of maintenance on these expansion joints, a lack of controlling the water, and making sure it doesn’t get to the right spot out of the building has caused this issue.”

Another Kennedy Center official likened an area of corroded steel to “tissue paper,” saying “it literally crumbles in your hand.”

Water damage from rainwater and planters on the roof has also caused the marble on the exterior of the building and granite pavers to rust and discolor, while also causing overhead panels on the outdoor deck to fail.

“Not a good idea to put planters in these places where you can’t really control the water,” the Kennedy Center official said during the tour. “The waterproofing membrane in the planter failed, the water from the terrace level is getting into the structure, because the roof that’s up there has failed, and all of that water is rusting the steel that’s supporting these soffit panels.”

The tour also included a stop at the River Pump Room, which contains the Center’s filtration system for the Potomac River water used in the building’s cooling system. That filtration system machine has not functioned since 1996, the official said. The building’s water chillers that support the air handlers throughout the building were installed in 1995 and are “well past their useful life,” as are the boilers, the official said.

The cooling system poses environmental concerns as well, the official said, as water is unfiltered and the building cannot cool water to the point it needs to be before being pumped back into the Potomac River.

“This entire room needs to be redesigned,” the Kennedy Center official said. The facility is looking to reconstruct the River Pump Room into a more contemporary, water-tower-based system.

The Concert Hall and Opera House will be getting improvements to the stage as well.

How is the project being funded?

These maintenance, repair, and capital projects are all being funded by the $257 million allotted for the Kennedy Center in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

But the venue is also sourcing funding from private and corporate donors for additional improvements to the dated infrastructure, which includes the building’s lounge spaces.

“The opportunity to support renovations are underway, and there is genuine enthusiasm from the philanthropic community about this project,” a Kennedy Center spokesperson told the Washington Examiner when asked about who has contributed to the renovation fundraising.

From February to December 2025, the performing arts center fundraised $130 million from donors such as Amazon, Booz Allen Hamilton, and RTX, according to the Wall Street Journal. This was, however, before Trump announced the facility would close for two years for renovations.

Why the two-year closure?

Floca addressed the decision to close the facility for two years following the July 4 celebration of America’s 250th anniversary. He explained that officials debated for years over how to approach the improvements, either in one fell swoop with a closure or project by project, saying that he ultimately recommended a two-year closure to the White House.

“I did look at all of the projects and all of the investments, figuring out how to do them individually,” Floca said. “When the president asked, ‘How do you make these projects the best? How do you make them really excellent and deliver them efficiently?’ My recommendation was, ‘You close the building, and you do everything over a definite period of time.'”

Before he became the executive director and chief operating officer of the Kennedy Center following former director Ric Grenell’s departure, Floca served as the vice president of facilities operations. Floca has worked at the Kennedy Center for two years. He said the facility’s leadership initially attempted to work project by project, but it became “infeasible.”

“You can never really truly predict all of the different productions that were going to happen, and you can’t predict all of the things that you’re going to find when you get into a construction project,” Floca said. “So the recommendation was just natural: You shut the building down, temporarily, and you make this investment, and then you reopen.”

Kennedy Center officials also addressed the speculations from pundits that the closure had to do with a drop in ticket sales after Trump overhauled the facility’s Board of Trustees. Floca dispelled that the closure decision had anything to do with ticket sales.

“Across the industry, it’s been said many times that sales are difficult for performing arts centers and that this building, this organization, is no different,” Floca said. “But the decision to close the center is completely founded in the needs of this building and not the mission, or not the programming, or not being able to achieve that mission. We have to address these structural issues.”

The closure and name change are both being challenged in court by Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), who is an ex officio member of the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees, and a group of eight architectural and historical preservationist organizations.

WHERE TRUMP’S DC RECONSTRUCTION PROJECTS STAND IN COURT

Kennedy Center Vice President of Public Relations Roma Daravi also spoke about the pullback in attendance from locals and the departure of several performers from the facility after the transition from the Biden administration to the Trump administration. The spokesperson said the center did not feel any “drastic shift” beyond the initial jolt after January 2025.

“There was a shift in attendance by D.C. locals upon our arrival here,” Daravi said. “There also was a shift in willingness to work together, in terms of just staff even speaking to new arrivals in the building, myself included. So you know, there was an obvious opposition to the change that came, what 14 months ago, 15 months ago now, but there was not a drastic shift beyond that.”