L.A. Festival: A Gift From ’84 Olympics

The first of what could become a biennial Los Angeles cultural festival will take place in 1987, thanks to the commitment of Olympic surplus funds approved Wednesday.

The Los Angeles Festival, as it will be called, will be modeled after last summer’s Olympic Arts Festival and will feature theater, music and dance from all over the world. It will take place for four weeks beginning Sept. 3, 1987, Mayor Tom Bradley announced.

The $2-million contribution was made possible after the boards of both the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee and the LAOOC’s Amateur Athletic Foundation voted Wednesday to amend their bylaws to allow use of surplus funds for the cultural event.

The LAOOC’s articles of incorporation had specifically allocated 40% of any Olympic surplus only to “amateur athletics in Southern California.” The LAOOC’s bylaws now read that 40% of the surplus go to the Amateur Athletic Foundation, the organization set up by the LAOOC to dispense its share of the Games’ surplus.

Bylaws Amended to Allow Contribution

The bylaws of the Amateur Athletic Foundation were then amended to allow the one-time-only cultural contribution. However, attorneys for the foundation said the language could conceivably be changed again to make other grants outside the sports area.

The surplus from last summer’s Games is now between $215 million and $225 million, according to a report presented to the LAOOC board. This makes the Amateur Athletic Foundation’s share approximately $90 million.

Though plans call for the Los Angeles Festival to be held every two years, LAOOC Chairman Paul Ziffren emphasized that the $2 million is a one-time-only contribution and that neither the LAOOC nor the athletic foundation will be legally or financially responsible for the arts festival.

Robert J. Fitzpatrick, director of last summer’s Olympic Arts Festival, will serve as director of the new festival as well as president and chief executive officer of an independent, nonprofit corporation that will run the event. Maureen Kindel, president of the Los Angeles city Public Works Board, will serve as chairman of the Los Angeles Festival board. Other members will be Ziffren, Robert F. Erburu, president of Times Mirror Co., Peter V. Ueberroth, former LAOOC president who is now commissioner of baseball, and the Rev. Thomas Kilgore, a member of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency.

$500,000 Shy of $3-Million Goal

The $2-million donation--$1 million a year in 1985 and 1986--plus a corporate contribution of $500,000 from Times Mirror Co., leaves festival planners only $500,000 shy of the $3 million they must raise in order to receive a $1-million challenge grant approved Monday by the Community Redevelopment Agency. The Olympic surplus money will not be handed over until the remaining $500,000 is raised.

Total budget would be about $8 million. The event would be financed by an expected $3 million in ticket sales, the $4 million on hand at the time the challenge grant is made and another $1 million Fitzpatrick said he hopes to raise from corporate sponsors.

Though the Olympic Arts Festival was hailed alongside the Los Angeles Games as a success--and one that enhanced this city’s cultural image--securing a follow-up event has not been easy. Fitzpatrick early on insisted on acquiring new monies that did not detract from other previously funded cultural programs.

Fund-raising efforts reportedly were hurt when the LAOOC announced its mammoth surplus. Some potential donors questioned the need to dig deep in their pockets when Olympic planners were so obviously well-heeled.

Making a gift of Olympic profits to cultural activities, however, was prohibited until Wednesday’s bylaws amendment. Ziffren said the state attorney general’s office had approved those amendments before Wednesday’s board meetings.

In addition to the 40% share of the Olympic surplus to youth athletic activities, another 40% is designated to the U.S. Olympic Committee and 20% to U.S. sports federations.

The Los Angeles Festival will be designed in name and scope to join such international cultural events as the Edinburgh Festival, the Adelaide Festival and the Avignon Festival.

Fitzpatrick said the Los Angeles Festival will be “multiracial, multiethnic, multinational” and “will be accessible by its programming, location and ticket prices to the widest section of the community possible.”

Several Locations

Fitzpatrick said that the only firm location for the festival is downtown Los Angles. But earlier statements suggest the possibility that it will be spread throughout the area and into Orange County. He said the next 35 days would be devoted to site selection as well as to lining up theatrical and musical performing groups.

In another action, the LAOOC board of directors formally killed a proposal that it use about $3 million of its Olympic surplus funds to reimburse foreign Olympic committees for their housing costs in Los Angeles during the 1984 Games.

U. S. Olympic Committee officials who were present at the meeting said that the USOC still might use some of its surplus to aid foreign Olympic committees, particularly those in the Third World. No decision on that matter will be made until at least June, they said.

The proposal for some reimbursement had originally been made by the president of the International Olympic Committee, Juan Antonio Samaranch.