ARTS BEAT / HILLIARD HARPER : Foundation Submits Plan to Restore Balboa Theatre

The Balboa Theatre Foundation, a nonprofit group of 200 contributors that includes a broad cross-section of San Diego’s business, political and arts leaders, has submitted a proposal to restore and operate the historic Balboa Theatre.

The foundation, formed in 1982 to preserve the theater, was the only organization to respond to a March Center City Development Corp. request for proposals to restore the Balboa. The proposal included an innovative fund-raising scheme that could draw shoppers downtown for a 10-day merchants’ sale that would generate more than $200,000 in annual support for the theater.

It also included letters of endorsement from the Old Globe Theatre, the La Jolla Playhouse and Starlight, which view the theater as a venue for their productions.

“It’s a very professional proposal, I think one is enough,” said Kathy Kalland, a spokeswoman for CCDC, the city’s agency in charge of downtown redevelopment. “We knew from the onset that the strongest interest was from the Balboa Foundation.”

The foundation’s members range from rank-and-file theater buffs and architectural preservationists to leaders such as Gordon Luce, head of Great American Savings, Kim Fletcher, head of Home Federal Savings Bank, Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) and San Diego Opera General Manager Ian Campbell.

The foundation chairman, Robert Purvin, said he is counting on that broad base of membership in his plans to raise the money to renovate the faded former vaudeville and film house. A January study pegged the price of restoring the Balboa at $11 million.

Purvin acknowledged that no one knows whether San Diego can support the kind of big-time fund-raising campaign needed to restore the theater. The foundation is commissioning a fund-raising feasibility study.

“Our goal is whatever our fund-raising study tells us we’re capable of doing,” Purvin said. If that figure is less than $11 million, the foundation will ask the city for a “building allowance” for the projected shortfall. But city funding is no guarantee.

Although CCDC issued a request for proposals, that did not mean that the city had the money “to make it happen,” Kalland said. “At this point we don’t have $5 million.” Nor has CCDC approved the foundation’s proposal. Kalland said CCDC will probably analyze the proposal within a few months and make a recommendation to the CCDC board of directors.

Despite so many variables, Purvin is optimistic.

Joan Kroc’s $1-million donation to the proposed San Diego Soviet Arts Festival must have been as welcome to Mayor Maureen O’Connor as a Big Mac and an order of fries to a starving person. Coming on the eve of the O’Connor-led arts delegation’s 18-day tour of Russia, Kroc’s $1-million gift certificate of McDonald’s stock may give the mayor more stock in the eyes of some people in the arts community here as well. Many people have privately questioned both the feasibility of a major Soviet arts festival in San Diego and the delegation’s motives for going to Russia. But the instant credit (the $1 million may cover as much as half the festival’s total expense) brings with it instant credibility.

The San Diego Unified Port District’s inability to commission contemporary art notwithstanding, San Diego County’s public art program continues. Last week, the county’s Public Arts Advisory Board commissioned works by five local artists for sites in Fallbrook, La Mesa, Chula Vista, Otay Mesa and downtown San Diego.

The grants, which range from $3,000 to $10,000, raised nary a peep of protest. One reason perhaps: the council involved the communities concerned in choosing the artists.

The council formed review committees for each site including art professionals, area residents and workers at or near the site. The art ranged from murals for lunchrooms to life-size cutouts to a stainless steel sculpture.

The artists and sites: Leslie Nemour, Department of Social Services facility in Chula Vista; Teresa Mill, Rachel’s Women’s Center, downtown San Diego; Peter Mitten, a La Mesa Boulevard walkway; Larry Dumlao and Michael Schnorr, artists-in-residence grants for the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility; and Helen Redman, Fallbrook Community Center.

How well do San Diego arts groups compete for state funds? The California Arts Council announced awards in six categories earlier this month. In the state-local program for government agencies, the city and county more than doubled their 1987 grants, evidence of marked improvement in their local programs. The city’s Public Arts Advisory Board will receive $28,836, and the county’s Public Arts Advisory Council will receive $16,416.

In the new category of individual fellowships, San Diego artists did less well. Of 549 applications statewide made by film and video artists for the $5,000 grants, only six artists applied from San Diego, according to a CAC official. However, three of them were awarded grants: Carol Blue, Steve Fagin and Louis Hock.

In the competition for a new challenge grant program, the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art was the only local organization given the nod for one of the 34 grants awarded statewide. The challenge grant requires that the museum match the $25,000 in state money on a 3-1 basis.