What now for cultural arts?

On a typical recent day in L.A., art lovers were pondering the huge Jackson Pollock canvas at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Over at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, headliners took their bows, just as Frank Sinatra and Whitney Houston once did.

Cirque du Soleil’s “Iris” was in rehearsals at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, where the Academy Awards had wrapped only a few weeks earlier. Downtown, worshipers walked through the “Great Bronze Doors” that Robert Graham sculpted at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, and rock ‘n’ roll fans paid homage to one of George Harrison’s guitars at the Grammy Museum at LA Live.

The venues and the doors exist thanks to money from community redevelopment agencies. But a new state law abolished the agencies last month, and a powerful economic engine for the arts died with them.

Gov. Jerry Brown pushed for the change, arguing that there were more pressing needs for the property taxes that had funded redevelopment. Shutting the agencies frees up $1.7 billion for the state and $1.3 billion for public schools and city and county governments in the current fiscal year, according to an estimate by the state Legislative Analyst’s Office.

Now arts advocates will have to persuade financially strapped local governments not to forget the cultural needs that redevelopment had often addressed. If they fail, it could spell the end of an era in which the L.A. region’s cities were able to fund ambitious cultural projects.

“Nobody knows how things are going to play out,” said Danielle Brazell, executive director of Arts for L.A., a leading nonprofit advocacy group. “With the loss, it’s going to be up to municipal leaders to have the insight and foresight to say you need to use some of those resources to maintain a strong cultural ecology.”

Redevelopment agencies often viewed the arts as a tool for invigorating tired downtowns and other neighborhoods. With a mandate to eliminate urban blight and promote economic growth, they have pumped more than $470 million into arts venues and artworks in the L.A. area.

The city of Los Angeles’ redevelopment agency, CRA/LA, had focused most of its efforts on affordable housing and big new commercial projects such as California Plaza, LA Live and Hollywood & Highland. But it also regularly invested in the arts. Starting in the late 1960s, it funneled $231 million toward building and renovating venues, commissioning public art and supporting cultural programs.

Now the CRA/LA arts program is winding up its affairs. Director Susan Gray will make recommendations about how to spend the $7.2 million that remains for cultural projects OKd before the law terminating redevelopment agencies was passed last year.

In Santa Monica, a $52-million renovation of the Civic Auditorium, to turn it into a more desirable venue for concerts and musicals, will go ahead because it was approved before the deadline. Also making it under the wire was a $52-million parking garage and plaza at the Broad Collection art museum, now under construction in downtown L.A.

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A future ‘concern’

When city governments face big-ticket cultural needs in the future, though, “I don’t know how we’re going to fund it,” said Andy Agle, Santa Monica’s director of housing and economic development.

Jessica Cusick, Santa Monica’s cultural affairs manager, says it’s too early to tell what the full impact will be but that she and her colleagues share a “tremendous concern” that the arts will suffer.

The list of construction projects funded by CRA/LA over the years includes the Museum of Contemporary Art headquarters ($23 million), the Kodak Theatre ($30 million), the downtown Los Angeles Theatre Center ($27 million for construction and operating subsidies) and the Nate Holden Performing Arts Center in Mid-City ($13.9 million). It also provided the land for the Broad Collection and the Colburn School of Music.

If not for CRA/LA officials’ foresight, the free, outdoor Grand Performances series at California Plaza might not exist, says its executive director, Michael Alexander. Besides requiring the developers to build the Water Court theater, he said, the redevelopment agency insisted on a lease provision under which California Plaza building owners pay nearly $800,000 a year to fund the shows.

The agency’s theater renovations dot L.A.’s landscape from San Pedro (the Warner Grand) to Leimert Park (the Vision) to the San Fernando Valley (the Madrid in Canoga Park and the El Portal and Lankershim Arts Center in North Hollywood).

L.A.’s redevelopment agency also required developers to pay an add-on fee of 1% of project design and construction costs to create public artworks at their sites and to fund other neighborhood cultural needs. The result has been the purchase or commission of more than 200 pieces of public art, at a cost of $33 million. They include sculptures by Joan Miro and Alexander Calder, a huge mural by Frank Stella, a mixed-media collage by Robert Rauschenberg, and Graham’s “Great Bronze Doors.”

The percent-for-art requirement also generated $22.2 million for other purposes -- about half of it going toward the Grammy Museum.

Construction projects in L.A. will continue to generate artworks because the public art policy CRA/LA administered in redevelopment zones was not the only such game in town. Since 1989, the Department of Cultural Affairs has overseen a separate citywide public art requirement for developers. But it exempts residential developers, and the sliding fee scale sometimes generates less than the redevelopment agency’s straight 1%.

In Long Beach, though, the end of the redevelopment agency has left the city without any mechanism for funding public art. A committee of mayoral appointees has proposed a new policy that would require developers to commission artworks.

In Glendale, officials are trying to determine whether the redevelopment agency’s transfer of the Alex Theatre to the city last year is valid. If not, the city says, the 1925 Art Deco-style venue that the redevelopment agency bought and renovated for $7.3 million during the early 1990s might have to be auctioned, and a new owner could gut it for a non-cultural use.

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Lobbying in works

Facing an uncertain future, arts proponents are preparing to lobby government officials to spend some of the former redevelopment money on cultural projects.

Brazell of Arts for L.A. envisions taking them back to her girlhood in 1970s North Hollywood -- before redevelopment carved out the NoHo Arts District centered on Lankershim Boulevard.

“The area was a no-man’s land -- an old vaudeville movie theater that you didn’t want to go in alone, boarded up buildings and empty parking lots,” she said. “It’s a thriving community now, and the El Portal Theatre [renovation] was critical to that.”

Her core message, she said, will be that “the arts need to be funded because of what they do for livable communities, not because it’s a nice thing.”

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mike.boehm@latimes.com

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

A legacy of performing arts

Redevelopment agencies were instrumental in several major performing arts centers in the region.

CERRITOS,

THOUSAND OAKS

In the 1990s, the $60-million Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts was built entirely with redevelopment money, and $47.4 million, more than half of its cost, went to the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza.

RIVERSIDE

Riverside’s redevelopment agency spent $32 million to restore a 1929 vaudeville house as the Fox Performing Arts Center.

CULVER CITY

The Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City was a 1947 cinema that was provided by the city’s redevelopment agency, along with $1.25 million toward its renovation. A long-term property lease on a small city-owned parcel next to the Douglas will enable the Jazz Bakery, a nonprofit jazz promoter, to build a new, Frank Gehry-designed theater there.

SANTA ANA

At least $27.7 million in redevelopment money has gone toward cultural uses, including the downtown Artists Village, a 1990s expansion of the Bowers Museum and start-up costs for the Discovery Science Center and the Orange County High School of the Arts.

FULLERTON

Fullerton’s redevelopment agency has provided at least $8.6 million in loans and payments to renovate the Fox Theatre and Plummer Auditorium.

SAN CLEMENTE

The redevelopment agency spent $5.3 million to buy and renovate the 1927 mansion Casa Romantica for conversion into a cultural center and gardens.