New Orange County Arts Center Hires Director

After a national search lasting more than 10 months, the Orange County Performing Arts Center has hired a top Kennedy Center administrator as its new executive director, The Times has learned.

Thomas R. Kendrick, director of operations at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, will assume the Orange County post Sept. 9. Judith O’Dea Morr, general manager of theaters for the Kennedy Center, will become Kendrick’s top operational deputy at the $65.5-million complex currently under construction in Costa Mesa.

The formal announcement that Kendrick, 51, will succeed the recently retired Len Bedsow is scheduled to be made today.

“I’m very excited about the immense potential for this new project. It’s already emerging as a national model,” Kendrick, a former editor at the Washington Post, said in a telephone interview.

Now under construction in Costa Mesa’s South Coast Plaza Town Center, the Orange County Performing Arts Center will be one of the largest such facilities built in the United States in the last decade and the only arts center of its size being built entirely with private funds.

Officials said that construction of the center’s main facility--a 3,000-seat multipurpose theater--is on schedule for an October, 1986, opening. The complex will also include a 300-seat theater, which is under construction, and a 1,000-seat facility to be built after 1986.

More than 72% of the needed $85.5 million has already been raised, officials said. In addition to the $65.5 million needed for construction, $20 million is being sought for an endowment fund, as well as $4 million a year to underwrite programming and operations once the complex is opened.

The executive director’s search was launched last July, shortly after Bedsow announced his intention to retire. A former California Civic Light Opera Assn. general manager, Bedsow was appointed the center’s first executive director in March, 1981. He cited his age--67--and job stress as reasons for his retirement last February.

“There has been an administrative void (at the center), and a lot of decisions have been shelved,” said an administrator with an Orange County arts organization who asked not to be identified. “Now we hope things can get moving and policies can be finalized.”

Times staff writer Randy Lewis contributed to this story.