ARTS CENTER GETS FIRST DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR

Just how fully the Orange County Performing Arts Center lives up to its promise after Monday’s opening depends largely on the effectiveness of Thomas R. Pascoe Jr., a clean-cut 31-year-old who will become the Center’s first development director Oct. 1.

Pascoe has worked since 1983 with Gary W. Phillips & Associates, the fund-raising consultants who have guided the drive to raise $74.7 million to build the performing arts facility. He accepted the post in July. He will report to Thomas R. Kendrick, the Center’s executive director, and Judith O’Dea Morr, general manager.

Pascoe takes charge of the nonprofit Center’s crucial search for operating and programming subsidies. The amount needed is projected at roughly $4.5 million for 1987, the Center’s first calendar year of operations. Thomas R. Kendrick, the Center’s executive director, has said it has an unusually large need for private donations because, unlike many other such arts facilities, it receives no government support and derives no funding from either parking structures or a restaurant.

Pascoe was hired for the job although he has no experience as a development manager for an operating arts institution. “It helps if they have experience with an arts institution,” Kendrick acknowledged, “but Tom Pascoe obviously gives us a very fast start. He’s familiar with the area, he’s familiar with the institution and he’s familiar with our donors and our donor prospects.”

The staff under Pascoe, which he is now hiring, will consist of three associate directors, two secretaries and another member whose work has not been defined. The three associates will serve as liaisons to the Center’s fund-raising guilds and other volunteer groups. One of the associates may eventually work at obtaining government grants, Pascoe said.

Starting in 1987, the development staff will raise money for a so-called “performance fund,” which is intended to fund programming during the five- to 10-year period until a projected $67-million fund starts producing sufficient interest for the Center’s day-to-day needs. At the moment, Pascoe said, there is about $2 million in cash in the endowment fund. The rest of the $67-million figure represents deferred pledges from donors’ estates. Kendrick has predicted that the Center’s expenditures in 1987 will total roughly $9.5 million, with slightly more than half that dependent on donations. He said the rest would be money earned from performances the Center sponsors, rental fees from outside groups, such as the Orange County Philharmonic Society, and bars serving drinks during intermission.

A Chapman College graduate, Pascoe was born in Los Angeles and raised in Buena Park. His previous jobs include a stint as program director of the Boys Club of Buena Park and a year of marketing work for the restaurant division of W. R. Grace & Co.

“I believe that the level of support we’ve seen so far will continue,” Pascoe said, referring to the campaign to raise $74.4 million in construction funds. “We’ve relied on volunteers so far and it has worked very well.

“I think the same level of commitment will continue. It has to in order to insure our level of programming.”