President Donald Trump defended his plan to shut down the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for two years, calling it necessary to complete a $200 million renovation that includes the installation of a new Carrier Global Corp. air conditioning system.

“It’s in very bad shape. It’s run-down. It’s dilapidated, sort of dangerous,” Trump told reporters on Monday at the White House.

Trump said his proposal does not call for a complete teardown of the existing building, which opened in 1971 as a living memorial to former President John F. Kennedy, but suggested the changes would be drastic.

“I’m not ripping it down, I’ll be using the steel. So we’re using the structure. We’re using some of the marble and some of the marble comes down,” he said.

The president said his decision was driven by contractors working on the building, citing a marble installer who he said told him that “the same quality of job” was impossible because new stone was being immediately stepped on by event attendees.

“I was thinking maybe there’s a way of doing it simultaneously, but there really isn’t,” Trump said. “And we’re going to have something that when it opens, it’s going to be brand-new, beautiful.”

The president did not address speculation that the decision to close the arts center was driven in part by lagging ticket sales and artist cancellations following his decision to install himself as board chair and the attachment of his name to the building.

Trump over the weekend announced his plan for the Kennedy Center to close on July 4 to start large-scale renovation work. The facility, which sits on the banks of the Potomac River, is the preeminent cultural hub in the nation’s capital and hosts the annual Kennedy Center Honors, a lifetime achievement award for performers.

His efforts to transform the center has drawn widespread pushback from congressional Democrats and artists, who have said it injected partisan politics into an institution that was overseen for decades by a bipartisan board.

The Washington National Opera moved its operations from the center to an auditorium at George Washington University, partly because of new funding rules. The primary cast of "Les Miserables" refused to perform last May when Trump was in attendance, leaving it to their understudies. The musical "Hamilton," the Martha Graham Dance Company, banjo player Béla Fleck and singer Renee Fleming also canceled their bookings.

Renowned composer Philip Glass informed the Kennedy Center in January that he no longer wanted to debut a new symphony based on a speech by Abraham Lincoln.

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(With assistance from María Paula Mijares Torres and Jennifer A. Dlouhy.)

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