HUNTINGTON BEACH BENEFIT : FUND DRIVE OPENS TO EXPAND ARENA

In a move to bolster its arts image, Huntington Beach is out to raise $600,000 to make its small Central Park Amphitheatre into an important outdoor location for classical and pop music and for other performances.

But don’t get the idea that city officials are seeking a large-scale outdoor arena. They say they are not out to rival the 15,000-seat Irvine Meadows and 18,000-seat Pacific amphitheaters, the county’s biggest pop concert showplaces. Nor are they trying to match Garden Grove’s 500-seat municipal arena, home of the county’s only Shakespeare festival.

The watchword in Huntington Beach is to keep it modest.

“We want to keep it intimate. We want (the design) to blend in with the park’s natural terrain. We’re not after something that’s big or regional in scale,” Melvin Bowman, the city’s community services director, said of the $600,000 renovation project that includes, among other changes, increasing the Central Park Amphitheatre from 182 to 300 seats.

On Sunday, from 1 to 4 p.m. the city will be host for the kind of “chamber-scaled” concert that officials say is tailor-made for the dimensions and ambiance of the lakeside arena in the city park at Talbert Avenue and Golden West Street.

The free “Sunday in the Park” concert will be headlined by Thelonious, the noted jazz quartet that will pay tribute to the late pianist-composer Thelonius Monk in an hourlong performance beginning at 3 p.m.

The concert, co-sponsored by the city’s Allied Arts Board and the Arts Associates support organization, will open with the Marina High School Jazz Band. It will be followed by the jazz fusion group, Nature’s Own Way (N.O.W.).

Although an informational booth will be set up to receive donations, Sunday’s program is primarily a “community awareness effort--the formal public kickoff to the amphitheatre fund drive,” said Michael Mudd, the city’s cultural affairs manager.

Sunday’s program is the first full-fledged concert to be held in the 11-year-old arena, he added.

Up to now, the park arena had been used solely for weddings and such community gatherings as Boy Scout ceremonies, Mudd said. Among the future attractions being considered, he said, are dance concerts and drama and musical productions offered by small touring or local troupes.

In addition to the seating expansion, the first-phase plan by architect Ron Yeo--approved by the Huntington Beach City Council last February--calls for widening the stage, improving the lighting system and reinforcing the arena foundation. Later phases will include adding a band shell, dressing rooms and ticket booths.

Although plans initially called for completion of the first phase by the summer of 1988, Mudd said the city has not allocated the $186,000 needed for the first phase. The focus now is on finding private donors to help complete that phase.

Fiscal support in the remaining two phases, he said, is also expected to be a combined city and private effort.

Still, according to Mudd, Sunday’s concert has already had an encouraging response. In seeking funds to pay the $2,100 cost of the concert, the city and support groups so far have raised $3,200 (the donors include FHP Inc., General Telephone, McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Co. and Huntington Center Mall merchants).

The building of a new and far larger concert amphitheater was ruled out a few years ago, Bowman said. One reason was the competition from the privately operated Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre in Irvine and the Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa. Another factor, he said, was the problem of traffic and noise control at such large facilities--the source of a long-running feud between the Pacific Amphitheatre and that arena’s residential neighborhood.

Last year, Huntington Beach became involved in two highly controversial decisions over two clubs. The city turned down a live-entertainment permit for Safari Sam’s, a popular club for contemporary music, after neighbors contended the facility was a source of noise, trash and vandalism.

In another action, the city ordered the razing of the Golden Bear, a longtime mecca for rock and folk music artists, under the city’s downtown redevelopment program.

“No, I don’t think our (cultural) image was hurt by what happened to those two clubs,” Bowman said. “Those actions involved very specific issues and should not be considered as part of our overall image.”

That image, he said, is reflected in the Cultural Action Plan submitted last January by the Community Services Department and its newly formed arts and cultural affairs division. The plan called for accelerated visual arts projects in the Central Library and Newland House centers, as well as the renovating of the amphitheater.

Among the other proposals, the plan urged that the city’s downtown redevelopment include a major cultural element. This element, the plan said, should include the revamping of existing structures to house a museum and “performing arts plaza.”