Pay Packages for O.C. Arts Center Administrators Among Highest in U.S

Thomas R. Kendrick, president of the Orange County Performing Arts Center, and his wife, Judith O’Dea Morr, the Center’s general manager, are among the highest-paid administrators of multipurpose arts facilities in the nation, with combined compensation and benefits of more than $300,000.

Individually as well as collectively, Kendrick’s and Morr’s paychecks and other compensations rank just behind those of the two highest-paid administrators at New York’s Lincoln Center and ahead of those at the Music Center in Los Angeles and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, according to a survey by The Times Orange County Edition.

This is despite the fact that, of the seven facilities surveyed, the Orange County center has the fewest stages and ranks sixth on the list in the number of paid, ticketed performances per season and the number of full-time employees.

Also, Kendrick and Morr are, by far, the highest-paid arts administrators in Orange County, according to information provided to the Internal Revenue Service: David Emmes and Martin Benson, the founders and artistic directors of the South Coast Repertory Theatre, earn $65,000 each; Louis Spisto, executive director of the Pacific Symphony, earns $67,000; and Kevin Consey of Newport Harbor Art Museum earns $85,000.

Kendrick and Morr say they are fairly compensated. And Center board members say that at the amount Kendrick and Morr are paid they are a bargain.

Information filed with the IRS and the California Registry of Charitable Trusts, required for all tax-exempt organizations, indicates that Kendrick was paid $184,246 in 1988 and received a benefits package worth an additional $6,543, primarily for an annuity plan. This represents an increase of about 9% from his reported compensation for 1987.

Morr, who came to Orange County with Kendrick from Washington, where both worked as top administrators at the Kennedy Center for nearly a decade, is the second highest-paid staff member at the Orange County center, reporting earnings of $108,678 and a benefits package of $3,749 for 1988. This is an increase of about 6% from her reported compensation for the year before.

At the centers surveyed, none of the job descriptions for the top two administrative slots precisely mirrored Kendrick’s and Morr’s. In principle, all chief executives are responsible for everything that goes on in their institutions. But according to Kendrick, this is almost literally true for himself and Morr in Orange County.

Unlike most of the other executives surveyed, Kendrick said, the couple are responsible for day-to-day programming, administration, coordination with such regional groups as the Pacific Symphony and Opera Pacific, finance and budget controls, construction planning and supervision, marketing and media relations. (This despite a staff that includes a director of marketing, a director of development and a controller.)

Also on the couple’s list of responsibilities is fund raising, which now means presiding over a greatly expanded development department and an ambitious capital campaign to construct new theaters.

At Lincoln Center, although the operating budget is more than twice that of Orange County’s Center, President Nathan Leventhal is primarily responsible for day-to-day operations of the six theater-complex. Financing is handled by the highest paid of six vice presidents.

Leventhal’s duties do include overseeing relations with more than half a dozen constituent organizations, such as the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic, some of whose budgets exceed that of Lincoln Center itself, according to a center spokeswoman. But unlike Kendrick and Morr, Leventhal and his financial vice president have very little involvement with the details of marketing or with programming, most of which are handled by the constituent organizations themselves or by a lower-ranking center administrator.

Ralph Davidson, chairman of the Kennedy Center, oversees programming, fund raising and administration. But much of the actual programming is done by Marta Istomin, the center’s artistic director, according to a center spokeswoman. Top administrators at the San Francisco War Memorial and the Wortham Center in Houston--all of whom are city employees and paid much less than Kendrick and Morr--do no programming and very little in the way of budgeting and independent marketing.

The two administrators who come closest to Kendrick and Morr in the range of day-to-day responsibilities are Lawrence J. Wilker and Art Falco at Playhouse Square Center in Cleveland, Ohio. Their combined compensation for 1988 was $213,230--$89,986 less than Kendrick and Morr’s combined total.

But the size of the compensation packages is misleading, Kendrick and Morr said in separate interviews, because the figures encompass such things as prorated moving and housing compensation and “significant” out-of-pocket contributions to disability, health and retirement plans to maintain the generous level of coverage they were provided at the Kennedy Center (but which is no longer provided to administrators there). The figures also include lease payments for the cars provided to the couple by the Center.

When all of these factors are taken into account, Kendrick maintained, his effective salary is $166,000; Morr said hers is about $94,000. None of the other administrators surveyed would reveal the composition of their compensation packages.

“I think we’re fairly paid,” Kendrick said.

Morr said that she, too, is “quite comfortable with my level of compensation.”

“We didn’t move here for pay,” but for the challenge of building and shaping a new institution, Kendrick added. He also said he prefers to be judged “on the basis of the jobs we were brought here to do, and the jobs we have done.”

On that basis, Center board members agree that the couple’s compensation is not out of line.

By many standards used to judge such facilities, Center officials and board members said, the Center is a success. It has reached what they consider to be “full bookings” three years ahead of schedule. (Center officials say that virtually every day not taken up by one of 266 events this year is needed for load-in/load-out time.) More than 640,000 people attended performances in 1988, compared to 607,000 in 1987. Paid attendance for events programmed by Kendrick and Morr (as opposed to booked into the Center by others) was 85%, 20 points above the national average. And paid attendance for all performances since the Center’s opening has been 80%, also well above the national average.

Kendrick and Morr are “a great, great bargain for Orange County on the basis of what they’ve produced for us,” said Henry Segerstrom, chairman of the Center’s board. “That’s the most significant yardstick for measuring their worth.

“In the area of programming, they have done better than any other executive combination in the country,” he said, citing the Center’s international ballet series, which he said is one of the finest in the country.

“At almost any price, they’re a bargain,” agreed Roger Johnson, head of Western Digital Corp. in Irvine and the Center’s vice chairman for the corporate campaign. “They came to a brand-new area with a brand-new facility. I don’t think anything speaks better than the end result,” in terms of paid attendance and the quality of the presentations.

Segerstrom, whose fortune was based in part on agriculture, said that comparing Kendrick and Morr’s compensation to those of other arts center heads is like comparing “apples to apricots.” For one thing, lower salaries in Cleveland may go a lot farther than higher ones in Orange County.

Differences are especially pronounced, Segerstrom said, between a facility such as the Orange County center, which depends entirely on private funding, and those that receive a large segment of financial support from government.

Tax support for the arts carries with it considerable accountability and public debate, he explained, and salaries generally have to coincide with those of other public officials.

Segerstrom further maintained that the size, experience and range of expertise of management teams and support staffs vary considerably from center to center, affecting the manner in which responsibilities are shouldered and paid for.

In order to judge the cost-effectiveness of Kendrick and Morr’s compensation, “you have to look at the total executive payroll,” Johnson agreed. “We are not terribly heavy on staff at the Center.”

However, in addition to Kendrick and Morr, the Center reported that 27 other employees earned more than $30,000 in 1988. The Los Angeles Music Center listed only 11 in that pay range. The corresponding figures at other centers ranged from two at the Wortham Center in Houston to 106 at Lincoln Center.

It is difficult to find an exact comparison for the $73-million Center, which has one stage--Segerstrom Hall--and 65 full-time employees. The current annual budget is $15.4 million, 83% of which comes from earned income--ticket sales and rentals--with the remaining 17%, or about $2.6 million, coming from private support. Apart from its tax-exempt status, the Center has no governmental support.

Other institutions surveyed have multiple stages. All but the Wortham in Houston have bigger overall staffs and all but the Playhouse Center in Cleveland receive some form of governmental support, either funds or services. The yearly expenditures vary widely, from $1.67 million at Houston’s Wortham Center to $75 million at the Los Angeles Music Center.

The Orange County Performing Arts Center presents about 60% of the performances at Segerstrom Hall. Similar figures vary widely at centers around the country, from Lincoln Center, which presents, sometimes with a co-sponsor, nearly 90% of its performances, to the San Francisco War Memorial, which does no presenting but instead rents itself out to various organizations.

The number of paid, ticketed performances per year also varies greatly, from 2,200 at Lincoln Center to 231 at the Wortham. There were 266 such performances in 1988 at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

ARTS CENTERS COMPARED Performing arts center, top administrators, 1987-88 salaries* ORANGE COUNTY PERFORMING ARTS CENTER: Thomas R Kendrick $190,789 Judith O’Dea Morr $112,427 LINCOLN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS, NEW YORK: Nathan Leventhal $226,650 Donald Warner** $123, 515 LOS ANGELES MUSIC CENTER: Francis Dale** $175,000 Esther Wachtell $75,000 KENNEDY CENTER, WASH: Ralph Davidson $125,000 Stephen Klein $106,156 PLAYHOUSE SQUARE CENTER, CLEVELAND: Lawrence Wilker $145,630 Art Falco $67,000 SAN FRANCISCO WAR MEMORIAL AND PERFORMING ARTS CENTER: Thelma Shelley $86,996 Elizabeth Murray $61,802 GUS S. WORTHAM THEATER CENTER, HOUSTON: Ruby Black $38,213 Ken Ashworth $32,904 *Salaries included benefits packages where applicable **No longer holds this position

No. of No. of Budget theaters employees (in millions) ORANGE COUNTY PERFORMING ARTS CENTER 1 65 $15.4 LINCOLN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS, NEW YORK 6 307 40.0 LOS ANGELES MUSIC CENTER 3 400 75.0 976 KENNEDY CENTER, WASH 6 275 57.0 PLAYHOUSE SQUARE CENTER, CLEVELAND 3 90 8.5 SAN FRANCISCO WAR MEMORIAL AND PERFORMING 3 69 4.5 ARTS CENTER GUS S. WORTHAM THEATER CENTER, HOUSTON 2 27 1.7

No. of performances ORANGE COUNTY PERFORMING ARTS CENTER 266 LINCOLN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS, NEW YORK 2,200 LOS ANGELES MUSIC CENTER KENNEDY CENTER, WASH 1,500 PLAYHOUSE SQUARE CENTER, CLEVELAND 500 SAN FRANCISCO WAR MEMORIAL AND PERFORMING 700 ARTS CENTER GUS S. WORTHAM THEATER CENTER, HOUSTON 231

ORANGE COUNTY ARTS ADMINISTRATORS SALARIES* Thomas R. Kendrick President, Orange County Performing Arts Center Salary: $184,246 Martin Benson, David Emmes Founders/Artistic Directors, South Coast Repertory Theatre Salary: $65,000 each Louis Spisto Executive Director, Pacific Symphony Salary: $67,000 Kevin Consey Newport Harbor Art Museum Salary: $85,000 *Does not include benefits Sources: IRS Form 990 and arts centers.