Lyon Donates $1 Million to Performing Arts Center

William Lyon, chief executive of AirCal Inc. and a leading philanthropist, has pledged $1 million toward the completion of the Orange County Performing Arts Center, Center officials announced Tuesday.

The gift starts what a Center spokeswoman called the “final major gifts phase” of the campaign to raise the $70.7 million needed to build the complex, whose 3,000-seat main theater is scheduled to open Sept. 29 with a concert by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The gift from Lyon, a Center trustee, brings the total collected thus far for construction to $58.5 million, Center officials said.

In 1981, Lyon donated $1 million to Orangewood, the home for Orange County’s abused and abandoned children.

Lyon, who is also a major Orange County home builder, said at a press conference Tuesday that the $1 million is the start of a fund-raising effort that he will supervise. The campaign’s aim is to raise $3 million by June and eventually a total of $7 million. It started with a dinner for about 30 people given at the Center Club, a dining club next to the Center, after the press conference. Lyon’s gift brings to 19 the number of single donations of $1 million or more to the Center, a Center spokeswoman said. Most of those gifts have been designated for construction, while about one-third have been pledged toward an endowment fund intended to pay operating costs. Nearly $67 million has been pledged to the Center’s endowment fund, the spokeswoman said.

Lyon, 62, became both chairman and chief operating officer of AirCal, a regional airline headquartered in Newport Beach, in 1982. He is also chief executive of the Newport Beach-based William Lyon Co., Southern California’s largest home builder. However, the gift is personal, in the name of Lyon and his wife, Willa Vean.

Lyon was an Air Force pilot during the Korean War and served as chief of the Air Force Reserve from 1975 to 1979.