CRA Board Votes to Buy L.A. Theatre Center : Stage: It does not step in to make a Dec. 15 bond payment, which could allow them to go into default.

The Community Redevelopment Agency board voted unanimously Thursday to try to buy Los Angeles Theatre Center--without stepping in to make a Dec. 15 bond payment due on the theater’s debt.

The action is apparently part of a strategy to buy the facility “in the most cost-efficient manner,” which will allow $4.6 million worth of bonds to go into default--unless someone else steps forward to make the Dec. 15 payment. A default would “absolutely” place the city in a better bargaining position in its bid for the building, CRA chairman Jim Wood has said.

The action Thursday followed a warning from a broker who represents many of the bondholders that a default could be “a highly publicized and quite ugly affair” that could jeopardize LATC fund-raising abilities. Miles Benickes of the brokerage firm M. L. Stern also said that the bondholders are “the only group that has not been a part of the recent negotiations.”

LATC artistic director Bill Bushnell told the board members he applauded their decision to buy the theater but urged them “to examine very, very carefully your actions with regards to the debt service payment.” He cautioned the board to make sure that the theater’s attempt to raise more private-sector dollars isn’t jeopardized and called the meeting “a very delicate moment” in the history of the theater at 514 S. Spring St. and its neighborhood.

But he stopped short of arguing against the possibility of default, and LATC president Kent Damon said after the meeting that theater officials were “delighted” by the outcome of the meeting.

CRA chairman Wood defended the decision to let the payments lapse by referring to his “obligations to the taxpayers of the city.” The CRA is not legally obligated to back the bonds, all parties agree, but the bondholders’ brokers have said the agency has “a moral responsibility” to prevent a default. The City Council approved the Dec. 15 payment in October, but a spokesman for Councilwoman Gloria Molina, who chairs the council’s CRA committee, said the council is “not wedded to any one way of solving the problem.” Said Molina aide Gerry Hertzberg: “If the action gets restructured, it gets restructured.”

Councilman Richard Alatorre, who made a motion to approve the bond payment in October along with other LATC facility expenses, said “circumstances have changed” since then. “Now there is the possibility of a negotiated buyout of the bonds with the ultimate objective of the building being turned over to the city. I support that. It’s a question of what the price tag will be.”