COUNTDOWN ON FOR ARTS CENTER

With the opening of the Orange County Performing Arts Center less than 18 months away, the Center is an organization under the gun.

Although the project’s scope, inventiveness of design and success in raising private monies have won national attention, the Center has signed up no opening-season attractions. It has no chief staff executive on the job and no prospect of a let-up in its massive fund drives.

Still, at the recent annual Center membership meeting, Center board officials had more than enough glad tidings:

--Construction at the Costa Mesa site is on schedule for an October, 1986, opening. To date, $62.2 million, or more than 72%, of the pre-opening goal of $85.5-million has been raised for construction and an endowment fund.

--After a 10-month national search, a successor to retired executive director Len Bedsow is expected to be named soon.

-- Negotiations are taking place with some of the biggest names in symphony, opera, dance and musical theater for the opening season, which also is to include performances by major local organizations.

--A local poll commissioned by the Center, the Orange County Philharmonic Society and Opera Pacific confirmed earlier findings that audiences are potentially huge.

In short, officials say the Center project--one of the biggest of its kind to be built in the United State in the past decade--has lost none of the momentum it first generated six years ago when the South Coast Plaza Town Center site was picked and the fund drive was launched.

All monies being raised are from private donors. The opening phase includes a 3,000-seat multipurpose hall and a 300-seat studio-and-rehearsal theater. A 1,000-seat theater, still to be designed, is to be built after 1986.

Henry Segerstrom, whose family firm donated the site and is the largest contributor ($6 million), told the membership meeting, “This (project) is a case of a reality created by dreamers.”

But Segerstrom, the Center’s fund drive chairman, added, “Spread the word that, yes, we’re doing very well, but that we still have a long way to go.”

The raising of all or most of the remaining $23.3 million in the construction-and-endowment campaign isn’t the only formidable task looming between now and October, 1986.

For one thing, the 1986-87 opening lineup is still sketchy, except for what the Center described as “advance negotiations” with these three organizations:

- The Los Angeles Philharmonic, for a regular series and concerts for the Center’s grand opening festivities. “We have reached the form of a basic agreement, but nothing’s signed as yet,” Ernest Fleishmann, the orchestra’s executive director, said recently.

- The New York City Opera Co., for a six-week run in early 1987. Beverly Sills, the company’s general director, has announced that an Orange County Center appearance would be a Southern California exclusive (the Los Angeles Music Center in 1982 ended its 16-year collaboration with the company).

- The American Ballet Theatre, for a proposed engagement in the fall of 1986. “We consider Orange County a strong market that is totally separate from Los Angeles. It (Orange County Center) is a marvelous facility, one that will rank with the best in the country,” said Charles Dillington, the company’s executive director.

(A proposal that the Center be a site for the 1987 Los Angeles Festival appears to have been scrapped. Robert Fitzpatrick, president of the group organizing the Olympic Arts-style festival, said he has been unable to raise major pledges from Orange County-based corporations The goal was $1 million. Largely because of this, he said, Orange County has been ruled out as a locale.)

The emphasis on big-name attractions, according to William Lund, Orange County Center board chairman, is necessary.

“It has always been our intention to make this a truly world-class complex,” he said. “It’s a matter of (booking) priorities. We feel this is the best way to get our Center off the ground; that is, to bring in the very best from outside.”

This emphasis has also caused concern among supporters of local performing artists that the Center might become primarily an “import house.” Lund and other Center officials have said repeatedly, however, that local organizations will play “significant roles” in the first season, and that the Center is fully aware of its “community responsibilities.”

While no other attractions are in the “advance negotiations” stage, Center officials said, there are no dire deadlines for 1986-87. “We’re not in a time bind for booking the best people. We still have time, I can assure you, and we should be making some (booking) announcements very soon,” said Timothy Strader, Center board president and chief executive officer.

Even so, the uncertainty of the 1986-87 lineup hasn’t stopped some professional observers from warning the Orange County Center about programs that might be artistically wanting.

“If it (Center) wants to be judged as a place of national stature, it has to be willing to take chances, to do things that are artistically challenging and innovative, and not just safe box office. We have to wait and see on that score,” said the chief administrator of one major performing arts complex who asked not to be named.

Fitzpatrick, who is president of the California Institute of the Arts and directed last summer’s Olympic Arts Festival, sees the problem this way:

“I would settle for a black box (facility) or a warehouse and get the best artists for it, rather than a big palace that lacks stimulating art. This is true of any new arts center these days, be it in Orange County or San Fernando Valley.”

The larger community role of the Orange County Performing Arts Center, in developing new talent and audiences for it, is another issue frequently raised.

“I don’t think it (the Center) is clear on just where it wants to go, what its (community) purposes should be, as well as its artistic philosophy,” said Keith Clark, music director of the Orange County Pacific Symphony. “There should be a great deal more attention paid to its role outside of its regular presentations. It should be a leader in arts education in this community.”

For now, one of the most pressing issues is finding more money to run the Center and to fill it with high-quality attractions. Once the complex is opened, officials said, $4 million from private donors will have to be raised annually (in addition to ticket and other regular income) to underwrite operating and programming costs.

This dependence on private patronage, Center officials argued, has long been a fiscal fact of life for other big arts complexes, including the Los Angeles Music Center. At the Orange County Center, numerous support groups are being formed to help underwrite opening-season attractions.

(According to some professionals, the Center may have bypassed a vital source of income, that of having its own restaurant and parking facilities. Center officials said such on-site concessions were considered but rejected as a costly burden. The Center will rent a 1,250-space garage that is being built next door for the Segerstrom firm’s 21-story office building, and patrons will be able to dine at numerous restaurants in the South Coast Plaza sector.)

While members of other local arts organizations praised the fund-raising prowess of the Center, many fear their own support campaigns may flounder in competition with the far larger, more widely publicized Center drives.

“It’s a paradoxical situation for all of us (local groups). The Center is to be our home, yet we have to find more money for our own programs from pretty much the same people,” said Erich Vollmer, executive director of the Orange County Philharmonic Society, which is raising funds for its own presentations at the Center.

Hugh Saddington, chairman of the Orange County-based Opera Pacific, a group that plans on staging operas and musicals at the Center, put it this way: “No one wants a win-lose situation (in fund-raising), where we’re all stepping on each other’s toes. We have to go for a more unified approach--one that’s a win-win situation.”

Although no such plan has yet been formulated, Orange County Performing Arts Center officials talk of “cooperative efforts” in fund-raising with other local organizations, especially those that will be playing the Center.

“This (cooperative proposal) fits the role we have always sought, that is, to be the (cultural) catalyst in this region,” said Lund, the Center chairman.

“We don’t want to be at cross purposes with anyone. We all have the same goals. We want everyone to flourish.”

Next: Opera Pacific makes the transition to big-time producer.