Director to Depart : New Hurdle for Cultural Center

The resignation of Executive Director Roberta MacFaden Miller could open new doors for San Pedro’s Angels Gate Cultural Center, but also poses another hurdle for the organization, which is trying to become a financially stable, influential force in the South Bay arts community.

“The cultural center is Bobbie Miller, and we will certainly miss her,” George Beck, president of the center’s board of directors, said Monday night after Miller announced her plans. “But we will struggle on, somehow, as we always have in the past.”

Miller is leaving Sept. 1 to move to Northern California to be closer to her mother, who was recently widowed. Miller, 44, has purchased a country inn in La Grange and said she expects to help the community build a historical museum. She also plans to travel to Europe with her mother.

Financial Concerns

The center will advertise for a new director and hopes to find one locally, Beck said. He said he hopes to find a replacement by the end of the year. Miller is paid about $30,000 a year. Beck said the center’s handful of staff members will assume Miller’s duties after she is gone.

In the meantime, he said, his foremost concern is money.

The center’s most recent financial statement, for the 10 months that concluded April 20, shows that the nonprofit corporation is operating $3,800 in the red. As a result, Beck laid down a new rule at the board meeting: no deficit spending.

In addition, Beck said the city of Los Angeles, which provides space for the center at Angels Gate Park, soon will begin requiring the center to pay $300 a month for utilities, which Beck said “could kill us.” And, he said, he fears that without an executive director to promote the center’s programs and classes, enrollment--and thus income--could decline.

“I’m concerned for the short haul,” Beck said in an interview after Monday’s meeting. “How do we get over this transition in terms of just paying our bills?”

Positive Outlook

Miller was optimistic about the organization, which recently has weathered several crises, including threats of lawsuits by members who contested board elections and the reluctance of Los Angeles officials to renew the center’s license.

“I see the center on a brand new plane,” she told the board Monday, adding that it went through some necessary growing pains.

But now, she said, the center is receiving grant money and board members have a better relationship with city officials.

“I leave here feeling it is on sound footing. . . . I think those babyhood trials are over. . . . The timing is right for people with fresh ideas,” she said.

The cultural center, which is run by a nonprofit corporation that has about 340 members, holds art classes and provides studio space to artists in a complex of former military barracks. The center’s founders initially proposed demolishing the old barracks and building a new center with private money.

Troubles From Start

But the organization has had troubles since its inception in 1981. Fund-raising has been way behind projections, and during Miller’s four-year tenure, there have been charges that she drove artists away by creating internal conflict.

The board, however, has always backed Miller, who has been praised for being hard-working and dedicated.

The center had a particularly difficult time in late 1987 and early 1988, when it temporarily lost its state tax-exempt status for failing to file tax returns. It had to shut down its theater program because city officials deemed the buildings to be unsafe. Two members charged that Miller unfairly influenced the outcome of a board election by recommending that members vote for certain candidates, which prompted the city to delay signing a new three-year lease with the center.

Since then, the tax status has been restored. One theater building has been repaired (the other has reverted to control by the Coast Guard, which owns it), and the center has a new theater director who hopes to build an ensemble and stage his first production in the fall. A new election was held in January and city officials say they expect to sign the lease by the end of this month.

Board Representative

In addition, Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, who has criticized the way the center has been managed, will have a representative on the center’s board of directors once the lease is signed.

Mario Juravich, Flores’ deputy in San Pedro, said that although he was asked to sit on the board last year, he “kept away from their meetings on purpose because of all the controversy. I didn’t want anybody to have an opportunity to say, ‘You were backing them, you were supporting them just by your presence.’ ”

Juravich, who has suggested that the center’s board review Miller’s performance, said he is not sorry to see the executive director leave. He said the challenge for the cultural center now is to “muster up the community support I think is required for the center to grow. It may be that a new director might sway the community to fall behind the ranks.”