Foundation Gets $60,000 to Plan Arts Park L.A.

The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded $60,000 to the Cultural Foundation, a Valley group that is trying to build a cultural center in the Sepulveda Basin, officials said Wednesday.

The foundation applied for $100,000 of National Endowment for the Arts money more than a year ago. The grant money will help pay for a design competition that will provide architectural plans for the center by early summer, officials said.

The Cultural Foundation envisions that Arts Park L.A. would include a 2,500-seat concert hall, an open-air performance glen, a natural history museum and a cluster of workshops and classrooms set among the basin’s greenery.

Foundation officials plan to officially announce the grant at a City Hall news conference Tuesday. They declined to comment further until then. National Endowment of the Arts officials could not be reached for comment.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Sierra Club continue to negotiate in hopes of settling a lawsuit over the proposed arts park site.

The basin is a flood-control area and falls under the Corps’ jurisdiction. The Corps has leased 2,000 acres of the basin to the city of Los Angeles and appears set to approve a 60-acre sublease for the Cultural Foundation.

A number of environmental and homeowner groups have opposed the arts park proposal. Sierra Club lawyers filed suit against the Corps late last year asking that development not be allowed in the basin, They charged in the suit that alternative sites for the cultural center were not thoroughly considered as required by federal law.

Foundation officials have chosen to ignore the lawsuit.

The foundation has another, larger obstacle to overcome. The arts park could cost as much as $70 million to build and none of that money has been raised. Foundation officials said they will begin a fund-raising campaign once the architectural plans are completed.