NEW SEARCH FOR HEAD OF ARTS CENTER

Following the collapse of negotiations with a candidate named by a selection panel 4 1/2 weeks ago, the Orange County Performing Arts Center has resumed its nationwide recruitment for a new executive director.

William Lund, board president of the $65.5-million Center--under construction in Costa Mesa and set to open in 1986--said Sunday that the new search could involve candidates who were considered in the original recruitment phase that began last September.

Although Lund, board chairman D. James Bentley and other Orange County Center officials have repeatedly refused to identify the administrator chosen by the selection panel Jan. 16, speculation within the arts field has focused on Lawrence Wilker, president of the Playhouse Square Foundation complex in Cleveland.

Sunday, Lund declined to discuss Wilker or any other matter pertaining to the recent contract negotiations or the next recruitment phase, except to state that Wilker “has withdrawn from any further consideration” and that the panel search “has reopened.”

Wilker was not available for comment Sunday.

Wilker, 40, has held the chief staff post at the three-theater complex in Cleveland--the centerpiece of a sweeping cultural and commercial redevelopment in the city’s downtown--for four years. Previously he was director of properties for the Shubert Organization in New York; director of the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Conn., and an official with the Grand Opera House arts complex in Wilmington, Del.

Lund announced Feb. 4 that negotiations with the panel-recommended candidate had stalled and warned that the executive search might be reopened as a result. “There’s nothing signed with him yet,” Lund said at the time. “We’ve made our move (offer), now the ball’s in his court. We have to presume he’s still talking with his people (board of directors).”

The Orange County Center post is being vacated by Len Bedsow, 67, a former Los Angeles Civic Light Opera Assn. general manager, who is retiring after four years as the Center’s first executive director. Bedsow is to remain as a chief consultant to the new executive director.

Lund has said that since last fall, 14 arts executives, all of them “presently employed,” were contacted by or became known to the recruitment team headed by Harrison Price, the planning and management consulting firm that had conducted an economic feasibility study for the Center in 1980. By December, the list was down to “three finalists,” Lund said.

Lund and Bentley said Sunday that the reopened recruitment will be discussed at the regularly scheduled meeting of the Center’s board of directors at 4 p.m. Tuesday.

The Center’s 3,000-seat main theater, plus a 300-seat “black box” theater, are now under construction. The main theater’s opening 1986-87 season is to include the Los Angeles Philharmonic and--if current negotiations are successful--the New York City Opera Co. and the American Ballet Theatre. A 1,000-seat theater is to be built after 1986.