FESTIVAL BOARD APPROVES TWO HATS FOR FITZPATRICK

The board of the Los Angeles Festival, meeting in a special closed session to consider Director Robert Fitzpatrick’s new role as president of Euro Disneyland, voiced approval of the job he is doing and indicated there would be no conflict between the two positions.

“We didn’t take any formal action because none was necessary,” chairwoman Maureen Kindel said after the meeting Thursday at Times Mirror. “We are satisfied Bob is going to fulfill his commitment to us” in putting on the 1987 festival in September.

Beyond that, said Kindel, also president of the city Board of Public Works, “we definitely envision Bob will remain on the board” after he leaves for his new post in Paris later this year, and that he “will give guidance” in the search for a director for the 1989 festival.

Moreover, she said, Fitzpatrick’s artistic philosophy has already shaped the scope of the festival two years from now. “We’re thinking of doing an Hispanic and Asian festival, because of their major populations here,” she said, as Fitzpatrick had suggested.

Fitzpatrick, in a separate interview, said, “The board could not have been more supportive of me personally, both congratulatory about the new position as well as confident that the festival schedule for September would take place as fashioned.”

Euro Disneyland, a $1.5-billion resort and entertainment project of the Walt Disney Co., will be built outside Paris and is scheduled to open in the early 1990s. Fitzpatrick was named president last week.

Even before Thursday’s meeting, Kindel and other board members had indicated there would be no disagreement about Fitzpatrick’s new job. They pointed out that a precedent was set in 1984 when, several months before the summer Olympic Games, Peter Ueberroth, then president of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, announced that he would become commissioner of major league baseball that October.

After citing the Ueberroth precedent, board member Paul Ziffren noted, “I don’t anticipate the board not approving. That’s because we have every confidence he (Fitzpatrick) will honor commitments made to us. When we hired him, he was (and continues as) president of CalArts. It’s not unusual for Bob to be balancing several balls at the same time.”

However, unlike Ueberroth, Fitzpatrick is accepting an undisclosed partial salary from Euro Disneyland while continuing as 1987 festival director.

Asked about that, Kindel replied that “from the very beginning, Bob has been getting a salary from CalArts. Bob, first of all, has a hypermetabolism that allows him to do more work . . . than any other human being. And secondly, he cares passionately about this festival and future festivals.”

Mayor Tom Bradley, asked to comment on Fitzpatrick’s Paris job, said, “We will greatly miss Bob Fitzpatrick’s contributions, energy and drive in the city of Los Angeles. Bob’s efforts on behalf of the arts in L.A. have left a living, vital legacy. I know the work started (on this year’s festival) has been finished and that a tremendous festival will occur. Finding a suitable replacement will be a tough challenge. . . . “

At its meeting, the board appointed a search committee for a new director--or co-directors--that will be chaired by Ronald L. Olson, a partner of the Munger, Tolles & Olson law firm. One of the possibilities, Kindel said, was a “dual model with one person as administrator and the other person as artistic director.”