Performing Arts Center Finishes Year in the Black : Arts: Officials say they concluded 1990 with ‘an excess over expenses’ of $475,663, thanks in large measure to a cut in operating costs.

Officials of the Orange County Performing Arts Center said Thursday that the facility ended 1990 “solidly in the black” after all.

Giving their first public financial report since two months ago when Center President Thomas R. Kendrick described 1990 as the hall’s “most difficult year,” Kendrick and Chairman William Lyon said they finished the year with “an excess over 1990 expenses” of $475,663, thanks in large measure to a $460,780 cut in operating expenses.

These cuts, instituted in April when the first signs of an economic downturn became apparent, included eight staff positions left unfilled by the end of the year.

Citing trouble in the economy and the Middle East, Kendrick, in a lengthy, taped interview with The Times in November, predicted that ticket sales could be as much as $1 million behind the 5-year-old Center’s record-setting 1989.

At a press conference Thursday, Lyon and Kendrick said that 1990 operating revenues, mostly in the form of ticket sales, totaled $12.94 million and that expenditures were $17.46 million. The remaining $4.52 million--what Kendrick called “the inevitable income gap between expenses and revenues”--came completely from private contributions. The tax-exempt Center receives no direct government funding.

Operating revenues, therefore, were $1.39 million less than the $14.33 million the Center reported in 1989.

The Center raised just under $5 million in private support in 1990, Kendrick said. While this was $344,000 more than was raised in 1989, it was $747,934 less than originally budgeted. Nearly 12,000 donors contributed to the center, said Lyon, a prominent South County developer.

“Consistently excellent programming, steadily increasing levels of annual contributions and continued high attendance provide further evidence that the Center works--beautifully,” Lyon said.

Of the $475,663 reported as “excess over 1990 expenses” (also referred to by Center officials as a “surplus in income”), $260,000 was used to replace programming development funds spent for “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” a Center co-production with the La Jolla Playhouse that drew poorly in August.

Kendrick repeated his assertion that the Center’s problems during the year were typical of “the traditionally volatile summer period, exacerbated by the onset of recession and the Mideast crisis. But a strong rebound began at the end of September.”

While the summer schedule for 1991 is not complete, Kendrick said that at present the Center is not as heavily booked as it was last summer.

There were a record 269 performances at the Center in 1990; they drew 668,375 people, an average of 77.3% of capacity, compared to the record year of 1989, when attendance for 264 performances was 679,967, or 88% of capacity. This figure is higher than the national average, and Kendrick has long said that a drop-off here was inevitable.

In November, Kendrick further predicted that he would have to cut expenses to make up the shortfall at the box office. Asked then how much of a burden the downturn in the economy had placed on the Center since January, 1990, he answered, “Well over $1 million. We will be down $1 million on the programming side, which means that has to be made up on the support side or by cutting expenses.”

The $1 million did not include the $260,000 invested in “Forum,” he said.

Included in this year’s budget is $715,000 for the Center’s capital reserve for future repairs and replacement.