The Kennedy Center Honors will be held off-site for the first time in the ceremony’s history

For the first time in the event’s nearly 50-year history, the Kennedy Center Honors will not be held inside the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts this year, the center announced Friday.

With the main building currently closed to the public and security assessments still underway, the center announced plans to move the celebration of American performing arts to the Capital One Arena in downtown Washington, D.C., which seats approximately 20,000 people, compared to the 2,300-seat capacity of the center’s Opera House, where the awards ceremony is traditionally held.

This year’s ceremony is scheduled for December 7. The center says it will announce this year’s winners at a later date.

Even the 2020 Kennedy Center Honors, held late in May 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic, included performances recorded over several days at various locations across the Kennedy Center campus.

The change in venue for this historic event comes as the Kennedy Center’s main theaters have been closed since September 15, after the center’s board of directors voted to close for renovation. In court filings, Executive Director Matt Floca explained that the closure would be reviewed week by week, based on the status of the ongoing safety assessment.

The Kennedy Center board last month cited a partial collapse of the ceiling of the center’s Grand Foyer as evidence that the center should be immediately closed for repairs.

A construction consultant and the center’s director “consider the main building unsafe for continued occupancy and anticipate additional risks to the public and employees if the building is not immediately closed and renovations begun,” the board said in a draft resolution to close the center for two years during planned construction.

But President Donald Trump has previously said renovations would not happen — and the building could even be demolished — unless his name was added to the building — something a federal judge repeatedly blocked as litigation over the closure and efforts to rename the center continued.

“The closure will take place immediately, however, the renovation and reconstruction, which is a very large and complex job, cannot begin until the D.C. Circuit rules on the approved name of the board,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in September. “If the decision is negative, which it should not be, and is not overturned by the United States Supreme Court, the reconstruction and renovation of the Kennedy Center will not take place.”

The White House declined to comment to NBC News on the change in venue for the annual awards ceremony.