Stand on Theater Altered After $10,000 Gift

Three weeks before it abruptly dropped its opposition last spring to the demolition of one of downtown’s oldest theaters, the region’s most influential preservation group got a $10,000 contribution from the father of the building’s owners.

Stung by criticism after disclosure of the donation, Los Angeles Conservancy leaders have had to fend off suggestions that a deal was struck with the owners of the California Theater who sought its demolition to make way for a parking lot.

The 1918 movie palace on Main Street, with a two-story beaux-arts facade styled after the Paris Opera, is being torn down. A final bid to save it stalled in August before a city panel--in large part, some preservationists assert, because the Conservancy withdrew support for making it a landmark.

The Conservancy, a private nonprofit group with 6,000 members and a $500,000 annual budget, often acts as an unofficial adviser to the city on preservation issues and is regarded as a major voice in influencing what sites are considered for protected landmark status.

Conservancy leaders say the close timing of the withdrawal of their landmark support and businessman Jack Needleman’s $10,000 donation--the biggest individual gift in the 12-year-old group’s history--was nothing more than an “unfortunate” coincidence. Needleman’s sons own the theater.

Nonetheless, the group’s board of directors on Monday ordered the development of a formal fund-raising policy to provide “safeguards against acceptance of donations constituting the appearance or actuality of a conflict of interest.”

Acknowledging that “questions have been raised,” the group’s executive committee said it had “reviewed the full history of our involvement with the California Theater, and is satisfied that no improprieties have occurred.”

But some local preservationists say they remain troubled.

“Because of the timing of the donation,” said Rory Cunningham a Conservancy member for four years, “it looks quite suspicious to everyone. . . . It sends a frightening message to developers that preservationists can be bought.”

Said Hillsman Wright, a Conservancy member who is also chairman of the Historic Theater Foundation, “I don’t know if anyone can ever document that there was a quid pro quo here, but the issue is the appearance of evil.”

The Conservancy was instrumental in temporarily halting demolition of the California Theater in 1988. But on May 24 it withdrew its nomination to the city-appointed Cultural Heritage Commission to make the site a protected landmark. It was the first time the Conservancy has withdrawn such a nomination.

Needleman’s gift had “nothing at all” to do with the group’s position, Conservancy Executive Director Jay Rounds asserted.

Since Needleman owns several historic downtown buildings, Rounds said, “clearly this was someone with whom it was important for us to develop a relationship, regardless of what happened on that particular case.”

When he and Needleman spoke on May 2, Rounds said, “I asked him if he would consider becoming a financial contributor in light of the work we were doing together and he said, ‘Yes, how about $10,000?’ ”

Jack Needleman was out of town this week and could not be reached for comment. His son, Steven, said that the events leading to the theater’s demolition were “completely aboveboard.”