GRAMMY WEEK REPORT : THE PASSAGES OF ROCK : Why Los Angeles Is Courting the Grammys

Los Angeles city officials--stung last year by the Grammy Awards ceremony being held in New York City after six years at L.A.’s Shrine Auditorium--are going all out to keep the awards here permanently.

James Stewart, executive director of the Los Angeles Host Committee for the 1989 Grammy Awards, said the city has raised approximately $200,000 through private donations to sponsor a series of activities saluting the return of the Grammys to the Shrine on Wednesday night.

Efforts have included placing of “Los Angeles Welcomes the Grammy Awards” banners around town, a half-day “Grammys in the Schools” program held last Friday, a three-concert jazz “Night on the Town,” also last Friday, and a reception to be hosted by Mayor Tom Bradley on Monday night for Grammy officials at the new Gene Autry Heritage Museum.

Six hundred officers and members of the Grammy-sponsoring National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences are expected to attend the mayor’s reception.

“(Keeping the Grammys in L.A.) is the No. 1 result we’re after,” said Stewart (no relation to the actor). The awards show has been held in Los Angeles all but five years since the Grammys were initiated in 1959.

Michael Greene, president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, sponsors of the Grammys, said no decision has been made about the site of next year’s event, but did acknowledge that New York members of the academy are “hopeful of getting it back.”

Though the city benefits from the business generated by the estimated 3,000 people who will come to town for the Grammy ceremonies, Host Committee chairman Sheldon I. Ausman said his committee is motivated by more than the money the awards generate.

“Our view of this is on a much higher plane,” said Ausman, who is chairman of the board of KCET. Noting that the committee is part of a broader Mayor’s Blue Ribbon Committee for the Entertainment Industry, he added, “The Grammys and the Academy Awards and the Emmys represent Los Angeles as the home of the entertainment industry, and we would like to keep all three shows here.”