FACILITY MANAGER GROUP TO MEET IN COSTA MESA : ARTS CENTER TO GET LOOK FROM PROS

In the nearly six months since the Orange County Performing Arts Center opened, the Costa Mesa facility has been tested by performers, examined by audiences and judged by critics. But none will be able to understand the Center’s inner workings better than the group visiting May 14 and 15.

That’s when chief executives of major U.S. performing arts centers will gather at Costa Mesa’s Westin South Coast Plaza Hotel. About 16 officials are expected to attend--including the president of New York City’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and his counterparts in cities ranging from Tulsa, Okla., to Tampa, Fla.

The group, which calls itself Performing Arts Managers, is informal and closes its meetings to the media. Still, several of those planning to attend said in interviews this week their agenda probably will include the recent shortage of popular Broadway musicals, improving fund-raising methods and giving more structure to the group itself.

“We expect to have a larger turnout than usual because there is a lot of interest in looking at the new facility (in Costa Mesa),” said Thomas R. Kendrick, executive director of the Orange County Center and a key PAM organizer since its members started meeting once or twice a year in 1978.

Nathan Leventhal, the president of New York’s Lincoln Center and the chairman of the conference, said: “The group is very useful for trading information. At the last session, I asked a lot of questions about box office automation, which we are thinking about for Lincoln Center . . . they have it in Louisville (at the Kentucky Center for the Arts), and our instinct tells us we ought to do it.”

In Orange County, he will see a Center that has one of the most sophisticated computerized box office systems available.

Of special interest to those who manage the Orange County Center will be a session on developing interest-bearing endowment funds for the day-to-day costs of operations and performances.

The Costa Mesa Center is among an increasing number of facilities with such endowments. It has accumulated donor pledges worth more than $65.7 million--but there’s a catch: Most of the pledges are deferred until the donor dies. It could take 10 years or longer before the fund earns enough interest to be of much help, and the waiting period is one of the Center’s main financial hurdles.

Geraldine Otremba, director of operations at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, said experts on endowments may address the group.

“Museums and educational institutions are experienced with such endowments, but they are a relatively new thing for performing arts centers,” she said, adding that the 15-year-old Kennedy Center is about half way through a campaign to raise a $50-million endowment--in cash donations that will produce interest immediately.

Another likely topic is the producing side of musical theater. Musicals are generally regarded as a center’s most potent box office draw. For various reasons that include Hollywood’s lure for Broadway’s writers and the soaring costs of New York productions, there aren’t many crowd-pleasers on tour these days. The Orange County Center now depends on a New York producing organization called PACE Theatricals Inc. for touring musicals. But the Center and PACE, which has so far made Costa Mesa a stop for revivals of “Singin’ in the Rain” and “Stop the World--I Want to Get Off,” have had problems matching their schedules. Center managers often talk wistfully of one day investing in and staging their own Broadway-caliber productions, rather than relying on the road shows.

At the May conference, officials at several centers said, they may discuss the possibility of investing jointly in tours starting outside Manhattan.

Cleveland’s Playhouse Square Center is establishing a reputation for producing its own musicals. Most recently it staged its version of “Beehive”--about girl singing groups of the 1960s--after the show opened off-Broadway in 1985.

“We want to control our product, the profits and the schedule,” said Larry Wilker, who runs Playhouse Square. “Of course, that means that if we have a bomb, we eat the loss.”

A key topic for PAM will be the possibility of giving the group a more formal structure, such as hiring a professional staff member to keep records and organize meetings. Otremba seemed to think that “having someone who would give us a little more of a memory” would help. Marlow Burt, chief executive at Louisville’s Kentucky Center for the Arts, agreed, but he is worried that the organization might lose its easygoing quality.

“I like informality,” he said. “I’m going to drink beer, talk, swim beneath the palm trees,” he said, referring to the Costa Mesa meeting. “I’m looking forward to this. I don’t get to see palm trees very often.”