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

The formal announcement that Kendrick, 51, will succeed the recently retired Len Bedsow is scheduled to be made today by the board officials of the Orange County Center in Costa Mesa and the Kennedy Center in Washington.

In a telephone interview Wednesday from the Kennedy Center, Kendrick, a one-time Washington Post editor in its cultural and life style sections, said of his appointment, “I’m very excited about the immense potential for this new project. It’s already emerging as a national model. The energy of the community’s supporters is as high as any in the country. And the backing from private donors has been tremendous.”

Under construction in the South Coast Plaza Town Center sector, the Orange County Center is one of the largest arts centers to be built in the United States in the past decade, and the only arts center of its size being built wholly with private monies.

Officials said construction of the center’s main facility--a 3,000-seat multipurpose theater--is on schedule for an October, 1986, opening. (Also being built is a 300-seat theater. The final facility, a 1,000-seat theater, is projected to be constructed after 1986.)

They also said that more than 72% of their $85.5-million overall goal has already been raised. In addition to the $65.5 million needed for construction, $20 million is being sought for an endowment fund.

Programming Costs

While center officials are seeking to complete the building-and-endowment campaign, they said an additional $4 million a year in private donations needs to be raised, once the complex is opened, to underwrite programming and operations.

Kendrick will be taking the helm of the project at a crucial juncture: bookings for the 1986-87 opening season have yet to be announced; the center is faced with the continuance of massive fund drives for construction, operations and programming, and critics have expressed concern that center attractions may lack bold and diverse artistic quality.

Officials said they are in “advance negotiations” with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York City Opera Co. and American Ballet Theatre. They added that they are having “exploratory talks” with other organizations, including the Joffrey Ballet, San Francisco Opera and Shubert Organization. Most of the big-name attractions being sought would play both Orange County and Los Angeles, officials said.

An administrator with an Orange County arts organization, who asked not to be identified, said of the long-awaited hiring of a new executive director: “There’s been an administrative void (at the Center), and a lot of decisions have been shelved. Now, we hope things can get moving and policies can be finalized. Believe me, we’re all happy the new man is finally on board--opening day, you know, is just around the corner.”

Search Started in July

The search for an executive director was launched last July with much fanfare, shortly after Bedsow announced his intention to retire by the end of 1984. (A former California Civic Light Opera Assn. general manager, Bedsow was appointed as the Center’s first executive director in March, 1981. He cited his age--67--and the job stress as reasons for his retirement decision. Last Feb. 1, he officially vacated the post.)

The Center’s seven-member recruitment panel had hired some prestigious consultants in its search: the Harrison Price Co., the Los Angeles-based planning and management consulting firm that conducted the search, and William Severns, the former longtime chief administrator of the Los Angeles Music Center.

The recruitment effort, however, was struck by a series of frustrating delays. Although the Orange County post is widely regarded within the arts management field as a highly attractive one, searchers said potential candidates were relatively few--and all of them already employed by other major centers.

Severns, at the height of the search earlier this year, told The Times: “The (turnover) rate on these (arts center) jobs is very rough. People just don’t decide on (looking for) them. You have to woo them to come because someone can fall on his face so easily.”

Premature Announcement

After postponing announcements twice, the Center panel last January announced it had reached agreement on its “final choice” (from a list of up to 14 “prospects”), and that an official announcement was forthcoming. But a month later, William Lund, the panel head, said negotiations had collapsed with that candidate and that the search was being resumed.

Although Center officials declined to name that candidate, sources close to the search said Lawrence Wilker, a one-time Shubert Organization executive who is now president of the multitheater Playhouse Square complex in downtown Cleveland, was offered the job.

Kendrick said he, too, had been approached by the Price firm recruiters early last fall and had met with the Orange County Center panel later in Costa Mesa. “But I told them from the outset I wasn’t interested, that I had much too much to finish up here (Kennedy Center),” Kendrick recalled.

As the Kennedy Center’s director of operations, a post he has held since 1976, Kendrick serves as chief administrator for facilities, fiscal affairs and personnel relations, runs various educational, television and other public service projects, and is chief budgetary liaison with Congress.

Six Theaters

(The Kennedy Center, which has six theaters ranging in size from 2,310 to 120 seats, is home to the National Symphony Orchestra, Washington Opera and American Film Institute. Although the complex is maintained with federal funds, its programming is privately financed).

Last March, when Kendrick was attending an arts center administrators’ conference in Long Beach, he was again approached by Orange County Center officials. “This time I told them I was interested--that a lot of the work I had wanted to complete, like the (Kennedy) center’s debt reconstruction, was done. I told them, too, the challenge of a new project was too hard to resist,” Kendrick said.

While both Kendrick and Lund declined to state Kendrick’s salary, Kendrick said Wednesday, “It is, I can assure you, a very generous and enticing one.”

Of the appointment, Lund added, “It ( the search) has been a long road. But we consider ourselves very fortunate. He (Kendrick) is one of the finest (arts center) administrators in the country, and one who has been closely involved with one of the greatest arts facilities in the country.”

Times staff writer Randy Lewis contributed to this story.