CREATING A CENTER : Q

Henry Segerstrom, at 63, is regarded in Orange County as something of a cultural visionary. But that rather lofty image seems to have come about almost overnight.

Until the mid-1970s, the family-run C. J. Segerstrom & Sons Inc. of Costa Mesa was known primarily as a highly successful Orange County agribusiness, landowner and mall builder.

But that picture changed when the Segerstroms moved to bring big-city arts into their South Coast Plaza shopping and office sector in Costa Mesa: first, with a $3.5-million South Coast Repertory complex that opened in 1978, and now, with the Orange County Performing Arts Center’s $70.7-million theater.

Also, the Segerstrom firm’s benevolence to the center has been on a scale unprecedented in Orange County:

The firm donated a five-acre South Coast Plaza-area site for the complex.

It pledged $6 million to the arts complex, the largest donor commitment and one that opened the way for wooing other big-name givers.

Its managing partner, Henry Segerstrom, took over leadership of the fund drive, heralded as the largest private campaign yet for building a performing arts complex in the United States.

All this has served to heighten one community image of the Segerstroms as shrewd entrepreneurs whose cultural moves are ruled more by mercantile motives than by altruism.

After all, the Performing Arts Center could significantly boost the business of the Segerstroms’ neighboring new 21-story office tower--complete with 1,200-space garage and ultra-fashionable private dining club.

As overseer of his family’s business fortunes and cultural charities, Henry Segerstrom--Santa Ana-born, Stanford-educated, World War II combat veteran--takes praisers and detractors in stride.

For a man once averse to personal publicity, Segerstrom now clearly relishes--and nurtures--his image as arts entrepreneur. In Los Angeles, he is a member of the board of trustees of the Museum of Contemporary Art. Nationally, his firm has won Business in the Arts awards for the past three years.

And his 17-piece South Coast Plaza sculpture collection--including works by Isamu Noguchi, Joan Miro and Carl Milles--is touted as one of the biggest corporate public-art displays in the West.

But Segerstrom’s principal role is that of the Performing Arts Center’s senior salesman. As he depicts it in the following interview, Segerstrom sees his emergence as Orange County’s best-known benefactor as, simply, a matter of being at the right place at the right time.

Q: You have stated that your major cultural involvement did not really begin until 1976, with the South Coast Repertory Theatre fund drive.

A: Yes. We gave SCR the two acres and $50,000. There was a convergence of interests because South Coast Plaza had to qualify itself as Orange County’s downtown hub. So it became evident that if it is a good destination for shopping, hotels and restaurants, why shouldn’t it be good for culture?

Q: But how did you deal with the image of conflicting interests?

A: I told them (SCR) I would help with fund raising but said I didn’t want a prominent role, I didn’t want the community to feel that we were doing something just to enhance South Coast Plaza. But we saw that my own involvement in fund raising was not taken by the community as being self-serving--it was not.

So when the Orange County Center came along, I thought to myself: I know the community doesn’t think it’s self-serving, so therefore I would like to take a leadership role--and I don’t think there will be any conflicts, and there haven’t been. I don’t think that anyone I know feels there’s an ulterior motive in it (soliciting donations). Nor have we had one rejection by that intimation--absolutely not. People know if you’re genuinely sincere.

Q: Since this major cultural activity began at the time your commercial developments were also in the process of being greatly expanded, one premise is that your cultural motives are based primarily on commercial gain.

A: My cultural involvement is totally personal and sincere. It (culture) is an inseparable element in the (South Coast Plaza) development. In the cases of both the South Coast Repertory and the Performing Arts Center, the people came to me with the (site) idea; I did not go out and seek them.

Some people take a cynical point of view toward ‘most everything in life. They see a hidden, indiscreet purpose behind an activity. If you are to be distracted or dismayed or defeated by people who are suspicious, you never start anything.

Q: What was the status of the Performing Arts Center campaign when you joined it?

A: There was no (major donor) campaign before 1979--simply the desire. Zero. It didn’t exist. Nothing had started until the gift of land was committed.

Q: Still, the Performing Arts Center fund drive got off rather dramatically after 1979, didn’t it?

A: Our (initial) leadership campaign went very quickly, very successfully. Our target was $10 million, but we got to $12 million in less than four months. The foundations--Irvine, Fluor, Steele and Hoag--all gave us important votes of confidence (pledges of $1 million or more). But basically we plowed new ground in first-time donors. We were able to create and discover a whole new group who believed Orange County needed a cultural center and were willing to back that belief.

We’re a very superior population base in the sense of being well-educated and--I hate to use that word--affluent. Cultural arts take a prosperous community to support them.

Q: The motives of some donors in these campaigns can be viewed as less than altruistic. However, you have said the prime motive--your family included-- is a purely personal, cultural one.

A: To me--and I’m sure a lot of tax consultants will say this isn’t true--I don’t think people have contributed because of income-tax reasons. Donors tell me they want to do something for the good of the community. That seems so easy to say. But that’s one of the great motivations of this campaign--the overriding motive. It is a spiritual kind of linkage.

Q: The Orange County Center seeks to rival the most prestigious complexes in Los Angeles, Washington and New York. Do the patrons of these complexes think of Orange County--or yourself--as Johnny-come-latelies to arts building?

A: I have never had anyone here or in any other region question why Orange County is doing this. The only thing I’ve ever heard are words of admiration-- sometimes even words of awe--that we would be attempting to do something on this scale.

My gosh, if someone had told me several years ago that we would raise that much (for center construction and endowment), I would have said, “Wait a minute, I’m not sure we can do it.”

Q: At other major complexes, however, some administrators contend that the Orange County Center is giving up crucial revenues by not building and operating its own parking and restaurant facilities. Yet, your firm owns and operates the 1,200-space garage that the center will use as its main parking facility, and there will be no restaurants on center premises.

A: The center was never involved in the parking structure--never. The original request was that they asked us to get the city to build the 1,200-car structure. The problem was that the city determined that no public monies would be involved. It became a matter (for us) of privately financing (the garage) in some form.

The matter of restaurants was decided as a committee--I say we, because I’m on the (center’s) facilities committee and this was a collective decision--that a (center) restaurant, by and large, is a financial liability. We decided this because there was an adequate number of restaurants within half a mile, and we didn’t want to add the cost of $1 million to $2 million and assume the risk of a losing (restaurant) operation. We decided it would be a bad economic decision.

Q: You have suggested that your personal arts growth has paralleled that of Orange County itself--an area that has changed from a rural community with only modest arts attractions to an urban community with world-class arts aspirations.

A: I personally, financially supported the Los Angeles Music Center. I was a longtime subscriber to the Civic Light Opera there. I went to the Huntington Hartford (Theatre) and Hollywood Bowl. You have to remember, there was nothing much at all here (culturally) in Orange County then.

These things evolve. Orange County passed through that (arts transition) period, and I’m part of that same evolution. We have witnessed here a growth of a community-- a society--in less than 20 years, that you would have had to live in the Midwest for 50 years to have witnessed.

Q: Because of rapid urbanization, Orange County has been characterized as too fragmented and having lost its sense of true community. Has the Performing Arts Center brought a new togetherness?

A: Absolutely. It has done more than any other collective effort in coalescing our spirit of community. As Orange County’s sense of material well-being and cosmopolitan atmosphere have improved, people aspire to make it the best they can--a community that gives us a satisfaction of things other than just doing our jobs.

When this center opens, we will have a product that--while it’s hard to say (it) will be unique-- will be as close to being uniquely multipurpose as any hall existing in this country, and maybe the world.

Q: Another argument given for the Segerstrom family’s involvement in the Orange County Center is this one: You are out to build yourself a cultural monument.

A: Sure, some people might say, “Well, gee, isn’t that nice that it (the center) is located in a certain location.” My answer would be, “Yes, it is nice.”

But just because land was given, that doesn’t mean it (the center) is going to be successful--and then it takes an intense amount of human effort and confidence and belief. You have to believe; that’s why you do things. Why did some men get in a rocket to go to the moon?

When we announced the land gift, I said something that was very sincere and from my heart. I said my grandfather (Swedish farming immigrant C. J. Segerstrom) came here in 1898, and that it will be the ‘90s again when we probably realize the full fruition of the Performing Arts Center.

I remember saying: “Like in a hundred years, watching a star pass overhead, and at a certain point in time, you reach up and get ahold of it--and plant it in the ground.”