Foundation Announces Competition for Arts Park

The Cultural Foundation has taken another step in its attempt to build an arts complex in the Sepulveda Basin by announcing a contest for architects to design theaters, workshops and a museum for the proposed center.

As many as 1,000 entries are expected and by next spring the foundation hopes to have a detailed three-dimensional model of its Arts Park L.A.

The design competition may be met with some skepticism from fund-raising experts who wonder if the foundation can garner the estimated $50 million needed for construction. After seven years of struggling, the Warner Center group of businessmen and arts patrons has yet to begin raising any money for bricks and mortar.

At a Thursday morning press conference, the organization’s chief fund-raiser insisted that the competition and its resulting model will be useful for inspiring large donations.

“It’s like ‘Show me the horse and I’ll get the saddle,’ ” said Linda Kinnee, echoing the optimistic statements made by foundation officials last December when they unveiled an overhead sketch of Arts Park.

Kinnee also said the foundation had little problem raising $270,000 to fund the contest. And it enlisted Esther Wachtell, president of the Music Center, as one of the judges.

Wachtell gives the foundation an impressive--and badly needed--tie to the downtown Los Angeles art establishment.

“She’s a giant,” Kinnee said.

The design contest will be conducted in an unusual fashion. It is being broken into “mini-competitions” for each of the complex’s five buildings--a 2,500-seat concert hall, an open-air performance grove, a natural history museum, a cluster of exhibit spaces and a children’s art center.

There will be five winning designs--one for each building--and those designs will subsequently be modified to blend together.

“This is a very challenging and elaborate process,” said Donald Stastny, a Portland, Ore. architect who will act as an adviser to the foundation.

Stastny has overseen a number of such contests and recently conducted a similar “mini-competition” for an artist-in-residence complex in the Napa Valley.

“The products that we get out of this kind of competition are much more innovative,” he said. “The competitors are going to have to stretch themselves.”

Foundation officials are asking for designs that emphasize the natural surroundings of the Sepulveda Basin, which the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is currently re-shaping into a 160-acre parkland. A number of Arts Parks’ facilities will be open-air.

“This is the kind of thing you can only do in Los Angeles,” Stastny said. “You can’t do an Arts Park in Portland, for instance, unless you issue a great number of umbrellas.”

Teams of architects and artists are being asked to submit written proposals. The top 25 entrants will be interviewed. Fifteen teams--three for each building--will be paid $7,500 to present detailed designs.

The jury will then decide on the winners. Wachtell is joined on the panel by architects, design specialists, a representative from the Corps of Engineers, and Gronk, a local Latino artist.

Actor David Birney and his actress wife Meredith Baxter Birney are also on the panel. “They bring a knowledge of what artists need,” Stastny said. Meredith Baxter Birney plays the role of an architect on the television sitcom “Family Ties.”