Joint-Use With Developer Proposed : Bowers Officials Want Change in Museum Expansion Plans

Officials at Santa Ana’s Bowers Museum want to scrap much of a completed design for a $9.2-million expansion. Instead, officials said, a museum annex would be located in an office tower to be built jointly with a private developer. No deal with a developer has been struck.

Work on the expansion, which would have tripled the museum’s overall space, was set to begin this summer, but the project is now “on hold,” museum director Paul M. Piazza said Sunday. He said he expects work will be delayed up to six months, but others at the museum said that would be the minimum delay, given that the new concept is only in the talking stage.

Piazza said a planned renovation of the existing 52-year-old museum will proceed in January, as planned.

The museum’s 15-member board of governors unanimously voted March 15 to pursue the new approach, Piazza said. Officials say it is still too early to predict the cost of the revised plan, which would require city approval and which, like the original plan, be paid for with city redevelopment funds. But board president Harriet Harris said the museum will not seek additional city funds in any case.

The proposed office tower would be built on the same, city-owned land targeted for the expansion.

The change would mean discarding most of $1 million in design work by the New York architecture firm of Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, for which the city already has paid.

“There is a slim chance we will go ahead with that plan,” Piazza said. “But (we) don’t think that is likely.” Reasons for the reversal include the governors’ wish for a “mixed-use” development deal that would turn the museum’s land into a source of income, Piazza said. He said the board is concerned about recent changes in the federal tax code that discourage donors to nonprofit arts institutions, and a tapering-off of corporate giving.

The Bowers, a city-owned museum governed by a private, nonprofit corporation, is one of the three major museums in Orange County. Piazza said the museum has never developed the kind of private donor base enjoyed by the other two institutions, the Newport Harbor Art Museum and the Laguna Art Museum, partly because, as a city-owned facility, it wasn’t forced to take as much initiative as a wholly private institution.

Museum sources who asked not to be named said Bowers officials are shunning the earlier plan because they’re worried about having enough money to complete it. “Everybody knows we can’t build what Pfeiffer has designed for us for $9 million,” one source said. “Maybe it would be $10 million, maybe $15 million.”

But Piazza and board president Harris spoke optimistically of the shift and denied that financial worries prompted it. ‘We have not exceeded our budget,” Harris said. “We are not going to exceed our budget.”

Piazza said there was no specific reason for the change taking place just two months before work was to begin. “There was no specific catalyst,” he said. “The concern was fiscal responsibility . . . the discussion was to look at another approach. That’s all. There was nothing earthshaking.”

The Holzman Pfeiffer design called for a 45,000-square-foot addition with new administrative offices and a 350-seat auditorium to be built next to the current space of about 23,000 square feet: the original 11,000-square-foot museum built in 1936 and a 12,000-square-foot addition in 1974. Part of the Holzman Pfeiffer plan--one that Piazza says will be pursued no matter what--is the razing of the 1974 addition. Ground breaking for a parking lot for the full facility is still set for May 18, Piazza said.

The Holzman Pfeiffer enlargement was an attempt to capitalize on the Spanish-mission style of the museum. The museum focuses on the arts of the Americas. When the museum unveiled the design last September, Piazza praised the model’s “very contemporary . . . really elegant feeling.”

The city approved $12 million for the total museum project in April, 1987. Of that, $2.8 million has been spent on land for the parking lot and on the Holzman Pfeiffer design, leaving $9.2 million for renovation and expansion.

So far, no new design has been commissioned or developer approached. Harris acknowledged that board members have talked in some depth about a method of museum financing that is increasingly popular nationwide, one in which a nonprofit museum shares use of a building with rent-paying tenants, dividing the rental income with a developer who pays all or part of the building costs.

“Mixed-use development using a cultural facility and a commercial development is one that is being used by many institutions,” said James S. Snyder, deputy director at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which brought in $17 million by selling a private condominium developer the right to add floors over a museum expansion completed in 1984.

Piazza said the board has begun informal lobbying of city officials on behalf of the change. City Manager David N. Ream declined comment on whether he was aware of the wish to reconfigure the expansion plan, and referred a reporter back to Piazza. The issue could be sensitive in Santa Ana, where the best use of the city’s money has been hotly debated in recent weeks. A group of residents who want more and higher-paid police officers began recall proceedings against Mayor Dan Young, claiming that he had neglected public safety while spending money on a host of what they say are unnecessary items--such as Bowers Museum.

The city, which owns the museum and has been its main source of income, turned management of the facility over to a private, nonprofit corporation last April in the hope the museum could eventually support itself. An upgraded, enlarged Bowers has been cast as the anchor of a proposed 90-acre downtown redevelopment district, a 15-to-20-year city plan scheduled to include three other museums and related commercial developments.

Piazza said he and board members are telling city officials that a mixed-use approach will insure the museum’s eventual self-sufficiency. The income would help make up the difference between the amount Bowers receives from the city and the projected cost of operating the completed facility. According to an agreement between the city and the Charles W. Bowers Museum Corp., struck on April 20, 1987, the museum will receive roughly $1 million in operating expenses until 1997, and the amount will decrease by 10% annually until all city support stops in 2007.

Piazza projects that running the Bowers will cost “a minimum” of $2.5 million to $3 million a year when the museum is enlarged--at least twice the current operating budget of $1.6 million. To cope with the increase, the museum will have to rely on private donors, earned income from a gift shop, membership fees and grants. The Bowers currently raises about $400,000 a year, Piazza said.

“Looking at that picture, the board realized that the museum had to create another, major source of revenue,” Piazza said. “Discussions began in earnest about two months ago about developing a mixed-use facility. The idea is that by 2007 the institution will be totally supported by the private sector, and we want to aggressively develop a partnership with a private developer.”

One museum observer wondered aloud whether the Holzman Pfeiffer plan might not have proven feasible if an aggressive capital campaign had been established. Piazza, he said, has “been here a year and the place hasn’t raised a dollar,” said this observer, who asked not to be named.

Piazza said the museum’s need to fill basic staff positions--in some cases replacing city employees-- and basic planning for the reconstruction effort were higher priorities in his first year than fund raising. New personnel include programs and public relations directors and a business administrator. “We hired 12 new positions,” Piazza said. “If you don’t think to hire 12 people is a lot of work, then you’ve never done it.”

The reasons board members gave for wanting to work with a private developer reflect a changing climate for museums nationwide. “Museums can no longer do a lot of things they used to do to finance growth,” said Stephen Gerritson, a Chicago economic consultant who specializes in museum financing plans. “Historic preservation tax credits have been cut back. Tax-exempt revenue bonds are no longer available to museums for the most part.”

He said that he recently completed a national survey of 25 to 30 museums around the country and that 33% sought financing methods generally like the one officials at the Bowers are considering.

Meanwhile, Piazza said, Bowers officials do not anticipate any flak over having spent $1 million for a plan they now are talking about throwing away.

“You have to look at the long term,” Piazza said. “Would you give up $1 million if you could have $20 million and a stream of money coming in 20 years? I’d give up a million bucks. I’d be crazy not to. A lot of people respond to the immediacy of the situation and don’t look at the long-term results.”