Change of pier plans should not hurt ICA

In September, the ICA agreed to a 99-year lease on land owned by Hyatt Development Corp., which is run by the Pritzker family of Chicago. On Thursday night, Nicholas Pritzker, Hyatt's chairman, called the ICA director, Jill Medvedow, at her Brookline home to tell her that the company intended to sell the 21 acres near the city's new convention center.

"I'm really not alarmed," Medvedow said yesterday. "I feel confident in . . . the city, Nick Pritzker, and the law and feel we have the legal protections."

Medvedow said she thought a potential sale could even help move the project along. "We'll get a developer who brings some urgency to building to the table," she said. Medvedow said Pritzker assured her that any agreement would require new owners to abide by the lease and to help pay for infrastructure costs associated with the $41 million building project the museum hopes to complete in 2006. Richard Schulze, the Hyatt Development Corp. vice chairman, confirmed the company's commitment to the ICA yesterday.

"Hyatt Development Corporation will meet its obligations to the ICA or will require that any successor fulfill those commitments," Schulze said.

Hyatt had proposed building a $1.2 billion hotel, office, and housing complex and received approval for the project last year. But it couldn't raise enough money to build. Susan Hartnett, director of economic development for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, said Nicholas Pritzker had assured Mayor Thomas M. Menino on Wednesday that the company would make sure that its plan to sell the land didn't derail the ICA project.

"The Pritzkers have legal documents all over this project that articulate the public obligations," Hartnett said. "Absolutely at the top of that list is the ICA. There's no question in anybody's mind that this will go forward, and there's nothing that's happened in the past 48 hours that will change that."

But the Pritzker decision raises an important question, said Vivien Li, executive director of the Boston Harbor Association, an advocacy group.

What will surround a new ICA? Currently, the area is largely made up of parking lots. Li voiced hope that Pritzker or a developer who purchases the land will build a harbor walk to connect the new museum to the J. Joseph Moakley Courthouse, a property on the pier that's closest to downtown.

"You don't want this wonderful destination to be in the midst of parking lots and difficult to reach, because people will not go," Li said.

In 2002, the ICA released the design of its proposed four-story, 62,000-square-foot building. Designed by the New York firm Diller + Scofidio, it would triple the ICA's current exhibition space, include room for video and installation art, and feature a 300-seat auditorium. The construction timetable hasn't changed, Medvedow said. The museum will break ground late next spring and will be ready for a 2006 opening.

Medvedow would not give an update on how much of the $60 million -- $41 million for the building, $10 million for an endowment, and $9 million for the transition -- the ICA has raised. In September, the ICA said that it had $24 million, with $16 million of that coming from donors and $7.5 to $8 million more expected from the sale of its building.

Stacy Palmer, the editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, said that the announcement from the Pritzkers could make it harder to raise money.

"I can't imagine this is going to make things easy in a fund-raising climate that's already fairly difficult," she said. "However, if they're able to quickly reassure donors that the conditions are there and that the Pritzkers are assuring there's going to be land for them, they can make that case. But it means they're going to have to work harder at it."

Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the author of several books on the art world, said he doubted that the Pritzker sale would have much impact on the plans.

"People who are dedicated to contemporary art know the ICA, they know their past record, they like it, it's gutsy, it's really quite good, and they're giving for that," Hoving said.

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com.