Pops Concerts on the Line in Talks Today

San Diego Symphony musicians, still without a contract but hoping to sponsor a Summer Pops program on their own, meet today with city officials to decide if the Mission Bay concert series will take place.

George Loveland, director of parks and recreation for the City of San Diego, said he would meet this morning with Debra McKeon, the Michigan-based representative hired by the musicians to promote the Pops.

As to whether the Pops will take place, Loveland said he had “no indication whether the light will be green or red.”

Reached last week at her home in Michigan, McKeon conceded that it’s “rather late to be planning a summer season.”

She said many elements remained unresolved, but she would not elaborate. She said an estimated $1.5 million is needed to fund the Pops--money she didn’t have a week ago.

“We began so late,” she said. “My involvement didn’t come until mid-April. That doesn’t give us a lot of time. We can’t always make things progress as quickly as we wish they would. . . . With more time to plan, this would be a lot easier.”

She said that, in the past the Pops was funded primarily by ticket sales, but since there are no definite concert dates, no tickets can be sold. Since caterers and the like have to be paid, “the question at this point is really cash flow,” she said.

Loveland said the city needs “about 45 days” to prepare the site at Hospitality Point for the Summer Pops, and to work out the myriad details involved with the concert series, which has traditionally started in late June.

“It depends how advanced they are on their proposal,” he said. “We might be able to compress the time but not by much. We want to give it every opportunity to go. We (the city) don’t want to be the ones to stand in the way. Our position is to find a way to do it, not to say whether we’ll approve it.

“I don’t know whether they’ve got the money or not. I just haven’t heard. I do know there’s 1,001 details to work out--bleachers have to be erected, then inspected; parking has to be reviewed, then the lease has to be worked out.”

Loveland said the city’s lease for the site rests with the San Diego Symphony Assn., which has said it won’t put on the Pops.

In this case, the musicians do have the association’s blessing for trying to fund the program on their own. The musicians hired McKeon, who until recently was the No. 3 official with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.