THE TIMES POLL : 61% Favor Arts Park, Survey Shows : Sepulveda Basin Site Draws Less Support

San Fernando Valley residents are hungry for theaters, museums and galleries that would rival downtown and the Westside, but they are not eager to have a proposed arts complex built over rolling parklands in Sepulveda Basin, a Times Poll shows.

Just last month, a group of Valley businessmen and art patrons who call themselves the Cultural Foundation unveiled architectural plans for Arts Park L.A., a $50-million center they hope to build amid the basin’s greenery.

The complex could someday bring world-class symphony and drama to the Valley, as well as offering art workshops for thousands of schoolchildren. Yet the project has been hotly debated since its inception eight years ago.

Critics have said they doubt that the Valley wants or needs Arts Park. They say that plenty of theaters and museums are just over the hill, and that Arts Park would not draw enough patrons to stay afloat.

Close to Home

But The Times Poll reveals that 61% of Valley residents want the fine arts close to home and would attend events at Arts Park.

“The community is going to embrace this park,” Linda Kinnee, the Cultural Foundation’s executive director, said when told of the poll results. “It’s exciting. They are going to gobble it up.”

However, roughly half of those who support Arts Park said they do not care where it is built, as long as it is somewhere in the Valley. Those who oppose Arts Park now visit the basin more frequently, and they appear upset that the complex would usurp part of one of the last natural spaces left amid the Valley’s suburban sprawl.

These findings support the Sierra Club and community groups that have argued that Arts Park should be in a busy commercial area, such as Van Nuys or on Ventura Boulevard. The Sierra Club recently filed suit to force the Cultural Foundation to consider alternative sites.

“While the Valley is growing in population, people are becoming more covetous of open space,” said Jill Swift, a Sierra Club activist. “The people really have been saying this for a long time. The basin is a play area for their jogging, their bird-watching, all the things they can’t do on city streets.”

Sepulveda Basin already contains three golf courses, a water reclamation plant, three military installations, sports fields and tennis courts. However, large portions of its 2,000 acres remain in a natural state.

If the foundation has its way, a parcel of that wilderness will be transformed into a carefully designed and landscaped complex, home to an avant-garde theater, a wing-like museum and clusters of workshops. A futuristic arts center will stand to one side. A volcano-shaped, open-air amphitheater will rise beside a man-made lake where gondolas drift by.

“I think that once the people are educated and know that what we are going to build won’t destroy the basin, it won’t kill the mosquitoes or the geese, they won’t be upset,” Kinnee said.

And, according to the poll, Arts Park would solve some of the problems that keep Valley residents away from theaters, museums and galleries.

Sixty-nine percent of those polled said they do not go to cultural events as often as they would like. Expensive tickets are a major concern among these people--Arts Park would probably be as expensive as any other Los Angeles facility.

But driving time was equally troublesome, and a suburban arts center would be about 20 minutes closer than downtown. Arts Park would also lessen the difficulty of planning ahead--another listed hindrance--because it would be easier to meet family and friends at events near home.

Thus, 22% of the residents polled said they would visit Arts Park “a lot” and 39% said they would visit “some.”

Not all of these people could be expected to visit Arts Park, say marketing research experts. When translating poll answers to actual behavior, researchers often use the “90-40-10” rule, said Cathy Anterasian of McKinsey & Co., a Los Angeles market research agency that has done work for area cultural facilities. In this case, she said, one could expect actual attendance from 90% of the “a lot” answers, 40% of the “some” answers and, perhaps, 10% of a third, “not much,” category.

Using this rule of thumb, 36.6% of the Valley’s residents might be expected to show up if Arts Park is built. The Orange County Performing Arts Center has been successful by drawing 40% of residents in that area.

A San Francisco firm that specializes in assisting cultural facilities across the country said The Times Poll percentages are about average for projects that succeed.

Getting on Track

The poll results indicate that the Cultural Foundation is getting on track, said Jerold Panas of Jerold Panas Young & Associates, a management consulting firm that prepared a report for the Cultural Foundation in 1985 warning the group that it needed to improve in the areas of steady leadership, public promotion of Arts Park and fund raising.

“The numbers are high enough to encourage them to go on to the next step,” Panas said.

But before the foundation can begin building Arts Park, it must gain approval from the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, which controls the basin, and the city of Los Angeles, which leases the land. The foundation is negotiating to sublease the 60 acres it needs.

Government approvals, community protests and the Sierra Club lawsuit are not all that stand in the way of Arts Park. After eight years of struggles and occasional miscues, the foundation has yet to raise any money for construction. The group insists that it has been waiting for architectural models--something to show potential donors.

Fund-raising experts have expressed skepticism that the foundation can come up with $50 million. They say most projects begin raising money well before the design phase. And any large undertaking needs a “prime suspect” or “significant giver”--someone who will donate millions of dollars to get the project rolling.

No “significant givers” have come forward for the foundation. However, The Times Poll shows that Arts Park could attract substantial financial support from the community.

Money to Complex

Nearly one in three Valley residents would give money to the complex, the poll reveals. The average amount people said they would give was $13.50.

“You don’t know how many of those people will actually give money, but at least that 29% is very encouraging,” said Alan Kumamoto, director of the Center for Non-Profit Management, which assists fund-raising organizations in Los Angeles. “When you do a direct mail campaign, 3% or 4% contributions are really good.”

The foundation, he said, still needs to go after big-money donors for most of its fund raising.

“But that is made easier because they can go to the significant givers and show grass-roots support.”

Such support should not be surprising, said Mark Baldassare, whose Irvine research firm recently surveyed attendance at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Twenty or more years ago, shopping malls began appearing in the suburbs as people grew tired of driving downtown to shop, Baldassare said. A decade ago, professional sports teams began moving to suburban arenas--the Rams to Anaheim, the Dallas Cowboys to Irving, Tex., and most recently the Detroit Pistons to Auburn Hills, Mich.

Cultural Events

“There is a trend now in metropolitan areas in the United States for suburban performing art centers to develop and flourish,” he said. “The increasing hassle of traffic and parking means that, if given the choice, people will attend cultural events closer to home.”

The Times Poll on Arts Park was conducted June 25 using a random sample of listed and unlisted telephone numbers, said I. A. Lewis, director of The Times Poll. Six hundred and thirty-two residents answered questions about the project and other pertinent information. This survey has a margin of error of 5 percentage points in either direction.

Besides providing opinions on Arts Park, the poll offered a look at the cultural habits of Valley residents.

Fifty-six percent of those polled said they had been to a theater, opera, symphony or museum in the last year, but only 18% had attended such events in the Valley. Nineteen percent had gone to the movies 15 times or more during the same period.