Music Center Dispute Not Over Need to Expand--but Where?

A simple downtown parking lot littered with pop cans and candy wrappers lies at the center of a high-stakes duel between powerful cultural leaders in Los Angeles and top county government officials over the best place for a major Music Center expansion.

Led by Music Center Chairman F. Daniel Frost, the cultural leaders have been fighting to claim the 3.6-acre parking lot on Bunker Hill across 1st Street from the present music complex for three new theaters. Frost contends that nearly 19 years ago the county promised the parking lot for a future expansion.

Firmly in opposition, outgoing county Chief Administrative Officer James C. Hankla argues that the county-owned lot’s commercial development potential is much too great to waste on the theater expansion. The county, he says, would be forgoing millions of dollars a year in increased lease revenues from some of the most valuable undeveloped real estate left downtown.

A better home for the new Music Center buildings, Hankla says, is on a Civic Center Mall site flanked by the County Courthouse and the Hall of Administration just across Grand Avenue from the Music Center plaza. Hankla says he is open to locating part of the expansion on the 1st Street parking lot but not its proposed centerpiece, a 3,200-seat theater.

Caught in the cross fire is the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, which must ultimately decide where to expand the Music Center. The supervisors have neither embraced Hankla’s plan nor rejected it. And they seem unwilling at this point to force the issue.

The reasons for the board members’ hesitancy range from the practical to the political. They involve an increasingly strained county budget and the risk of offending some of the region’s most powerful private individuals--and political contributors.

The county faces a $170-million budget deficit for the coming fiscal year. To head off the shortfall, all county departments have been directed to trim their budgets by 6.5%, a step that could lead to hundreds of employee layoffs and massive service cutbacks.

The eventual development of Parcel K, as the parking lot is known, would not solve the county’s immediate budget problems. But Hankla and a number of the supervisors strongly believe that the development of public land such as Parcel K and two adjacent county parking lots will eventually produce new sources of continuing revenue for future county services. Hankla envisions high-rise office buildings and possibly a luxury hotel on the three 1st Street lots that would also complete the 40-year-old Bunker Hill Redevelopment Project.

Because of the lost investment opportunities should the Music Center expansion occur on the parking lot, Hankla--who is leaving his post next week to become Long Beach’s city manager--has dangled several “incentives” to persuade the Music Center leaders to build instead on the mall. So far, Hankla’s efforts have been met with strong resistance.

Music Center leaders dispute Hankla’s contention that a Parcel K expansion would result in lost county revenues. They contend that while the theaters themselves may not generate revenue directly, their presence would enhance the value of the county’s other 1st Street properties.

Hankla dismisses that argument, saying the current Music Center already makes the area desirable.

(Hankla’s successor, county Treasurer-Tax Collector Richard B. Dixon, said in an interview that he is impressed with the mall alternative but will not make up his mind until he has discussed the issue with Music Center representatives after Hankla leaves office Saturday.)

On the political side, the supervisors are well aware that the Music Center’s main backers--representing banking, oil and big business interests--have over the years funneled tens of thousands of dollars into their reelection treasuries. But they also realize that the Music Center supporters, if not sold on the site of the future expansion, could well be reluctant to fully back the effort to raise up to $100 million in private funds needed to build the three theaters.

“We don’t have the money to build the goddamned thing,” said Supervisor Ed Edelman, who tried unsuccessfully two weeks ago to settle the dispute. “There has to be a very strong fund-raising effort . . . so the people who are raising the money, it seems to me . . . have to be satisfied with the site.

“I do not want to shove down anyone’s throat the mall site even though it would free up our developing Lot K for revenue purposes.” Edelman added, however, that he is not ready to rule out the mall alternative.

But the mall is inappropriate, Music Center of Los Angeles County Vice Chairman Joanne Kozberg argues, because any major building fund drive needs “major seed money from a single individual.” Such seed money was provided by S. Mark Taper and Howard Ahmanson for the two present Music Center theaters bearing their names. Kozberg, who with Frost is negotiating the Music Center expansion agreement, believes a major donor may not step forward if the expansion is on the mall.

Kozberg said that privately funded theaters in other cities “are usually visible, often free-standing . . . very distinguished.” She said these qualities would be lost at the mall location between two government buildings.

Los Angeles architect Barton Myers first unveiled the mall site to Frost and MCA Inc. Chairman Lew Wasserman in December, 1985. Participants said Frost and Wasserman were outraged at the proposal because they had expected to see a plan for Parcel K.

Wasserman, a former Music Center Foundation treasurer, declined in a brief telephone interview to describe his reaction to Myers’ plan, explaining that “whatever input I’ve had has been given to Dan Frost.” He added that he has not been involved in the ongoing talks except on “an ad hoc basis.”

Frost said he was “shocked and dismayed” when he first saw Myers’ plan.

Myers told The Times that the concerns voiced by Kozberg and Frost are unfounded.

“I’m convinced the mall site is the most prestigious that can be offered to a donor . . . because it is at the head of the mall and (from the back) faces City Hall and it would share the (Music Center Plaza) equally with the (Dorothy) Chandler (Pavilion), Taper and Ahmanson,” Myers said in an interview.

Myers said if the new expansion is on Parcel K, it could make “second-class citizens” of the older facilities, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Mark Taper Forum and the Ahmanson Theater.

The Music Center leaders, citing their own studies, also contend that building on the mall would cost millions more than on Parcel K, a probability even the county concedes. But Hankla, as part of his incentive package, has suggested that the county might help make up the difference from revenue received from the commercial tenants of Parcel K.

Frost, a senior partner in the prestigious Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher law firm, helped draft the agreement nearly 19 years ago to designate Parcel K for an eventual Music Center expansion and hinted that a lawsuit could follow any county effort to back out. He said he is convinced that “it is only one or two people in (Hankla’s staff) that are trying to push us in the mall.”

“I really feel that the supervisors strongly support the Music Center,” Frost said. “I know that for a fact, and I cannot believe that the supervisors would repudiate a commitment of the county of Lot K to the Music Center expansion.”

So far, the supervisors have not backed off that commitment. But in interviews last week it was also clear that, largely because of Hankla’s concerns about generating revenues, there are not the necessary three votes for such a Parcel K expansion either.

Supervisor Pete Schabarum is viewed by county sources as the one board member who would most favor some Civic Center Mall alternative. But in an interview, he refused to disclose which plan he might ultimately back.

But Schabarum said he is “very anxious” to “get off the stick” so the development of the county properties can begin.

“We’re getting a lot of whiskers on this, and I think that’s unfortunate,” Schabarum said.

Technically, the county’s 19-year-old agreement only committed Parcel K for the eventual construction of a performing arts academy, a plan the Music Center has largely abandoned. But until the mall-Parcel K dispute began in late 1985, that shift in plans had not seemed to be a major stumbling block to the three-theater expansion idea.

The Music Center expansion was first announced with much fanfare in 1982. It called for a 3,200-seat concert hall and theater, a 1,500-seat theater and a 500-seat experimental theater. Also included in the $40-million expansion proposal was a performing arts library, a gift shop, workshops and the Music Center’s administrative offices. Since the original announcement, estimates of the expansion cost have climbed to between $50 million and $100 million.

In 1984, the Board of Supervisors ordered then-Chief Administrative Officer Harry Hufford to negotiate a development plan for the three-theater expansion on Parcel K. Hufford, in early 1985, became chief administrative officer for the Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher law firm and later became a vice chairman of the Music Center Board of Governors.

At about the time Hufford left and was succeeded by Hankla, a controversial report by theater consultant Harrison Price Co. recommended a scaled-down version of the original Music Center expansion. The study concluded that because of competition from existing entertainment facilities, only one of the three proposed theaters was needed, that being either a 2,800- or 3,000-seat concert hall.

The Harrison Price study was written before the opening of the Orange County Performing Arts Center last September and the Los Angeles Theatre Center on Spring Street a year earlier.

Harrison Price’s Nick Winslow said recently, “I have not seen anything that’s occurred that would alter my position (from the 1985 report).”

Although Music Center officials have tried to discount the Harrison Price findings, the study has nevertheless had a significant impact on the county’s willingness to embrace a full Music Center expansion. Even Edelman, one of the Music Center’s biggest boosters, cited the Price study as reason to proceed cautiously.

“Let me make it clear I favor and want to assist expanding the Music Center to what is needed,” Edelman said. “There is some dispute as to what is needed.”

Hankla has used the Price report in his fight for at least a partial mall location, arguing that siting the large theater on the mall would allow a phase-in of the other two theaters on Parcel K, if they are eventually needed.

To leading Music Center officials, there is no question that some sort of expansion is needed. Frost and Kozberg said there will be a reassessment of the 1982 three-theater proposal once the siting and other disputed issues are settled.

Sandra Kimberling, general manager of the Music Center Operating Company, said the main crunch is at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion where six resident companies are competing for time. The Pavilion is also used during the year for the Academy Awards presentations and for community-based productions.

Kimberling added that there might be some easing of the scheduling logjam if the Civic Light Opera carries out its recent threat to move from the Music Center to the Pantages Theater in Hollywood this summer.

Further clouding the dispute’s resolution are Music Center efforts for an unprecedented guarantee from the county to maintain and operate the facilities at a “world-class” level. Since the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion opened in 1964, the county has maintained the Music Center’s facilities with annual appropriations voted on by the supervisors.

But Music Center officials, noting the county’s chronic budget crunches, have said the county needs to guarantee to potential donors that the facilities will be kept up.

“You have a real Catch-22 situation here,” said Music Center Vice Chairman Kozberg. “We hear constantly that the county is under incredible (fiscal) stress and we do know it is true, and they say they don’t want to give us a formula agreement because they have this stress on them.

“And yet, at the same time, that makes us nervous because we’re going to the private sector to say we need millions and millions of dollars (to build the expansion), but there is no guarantee that it will be maintained and operated.”

Acknowledging those concerns, Hankla suggested some form of an operating formula guarantee, but he conditioned it on the Music Center board’s willingness to move to the mall. Music Center officials have rejected that idea.

Hankla is “promising a share of the income of the property development,” said former county Chief Administrative Officer Hufford. “There are no figures to support those promises, but he’s giving those kinds of promises.”

The city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, which has planning jurisdiction over the project area, is officially neutral on the mall versus Parcel K issue, although planners Charles Loveman and John Spalding said they would like to see some Music Center presence on Parcel K. The CRA officials said a decision must be made as soon as possible because what is built on Parcel K will determine the scope of the Bunker Hill development’s final phase.