The Center of Fluor Chief’s Attentions

Yes, there’s a very good chance he’ll be visiting the Middle East soon, says Les McCraw, chairman and chief executive officer of Fluor Corp., the Irvine firm likely to help rebuild Kuwait.

On Friday afternoon, Fluor phones are screaming off the hook and McCraw is trying to get “Mosbacher on the line” he says, sinking into a plush chair in his 10th-floor digs.

But it can wait. Right now, this year’s fifth anniversary celebration of the Orange County Performing Arts Center is on his mind.

And more than anything, says the man who waltzed Fluor into the black after it lost millions in the mid-1980s, he wants Orange County to know that “everyone can participate.”

“We want to reach out,” he says. “The celebration is going to take the form of a community outreach, where everyone can come and relate.”

Along with performing arts activist Janice Johnson of Laguna Beach, McCraw, a Newport Beach resident, will oversee the anniversary’s fund-raising gala events, which begin on Sept.20 with two benefit fashion extravaganzas and conclude on Sept. 29 with a free birthday bash, complete with mega-cake.

What happens between is going to keep arts-loving social types crisping the wires for months. For starters, a gala like Orange County has never seen will be played out on a stage extended over Segerstrom Hall’s orchestra pit. The gala’s 800 party-goers, who will dish up from $500 to $2,500 each to attend, will dine, dance and be entertained by a full orchestra and “a headliner,” Johnson promises.

Center board members Kathryn Thompson and Rick Muth are co-chairing the formal Viennese ball-themed affair. (Thompson--a social blockbuster--is also honorary chairwoman of the two fashion shows, staged by the Center’s Guilds support group.)

The kickoff gala’s price tag must be stiff to help pay for the rest of the week’s festivities, says Johnson, whose husband Roger Johnson (chairman and CEO of Western Digital) is the Center’s vice chairman of development.

Also on the agenda for Anniversary Week: two more fund-raising galas on stage at Segerstrom Hall, sponsored by Opera Pacific, the Pacific Symphony Orchestra, and the Orange County Philharmonic Society. McCraw and Johnson wanted to involve the county’s regional groups to give the anniversary cohesiveness and promote unity.

“It is our goal to involve as many people as possible,” says Johnson, “so that they may benefit along with the Center from the proceeds. We all need to work together.” (Fearing that they won’t raise as much money as they do at their annual pre-season gala in September, South Coast Repertory has chosen not to participate in the Center galas. SCR does plan to become involved in the Sept. 29 birthday party, however.)

McCraw says the Center’s fifth anniversary is the obvious time for the community to take a hard look backward and forward. “We can reflect on the Center’s accomplishments,” he says in his soft-spoken, Southern drawl (he hails from South Carolina), “we can ask ourselves: ‘What happened here?’ We can assess and express appreciation.

“And we can look forward to restate and refine the vision, ask ourselves: ‘What could we do better?’

“It’s one thing to get a Center built, another to keep it going at a level everybody is proud of.”

As for this new experience of helping coordinate an arts celebration, McCraw, who will escort his wife, Mary Earle, to the parties, says he has learned a lot. “I’ve found there’s quite a difference between running a company board meeting and a meeting with the diverse groups involved in the performing arts,” he says, laughing. “(The latter) takes great patience.”

But McCraw has no doubt the anniversary celebration will be every bit as exciting and successful as the splash that opened the Center.

“You know what?” he asks, smiling. “I moved to California the very day the Center opened. I remember reading all of those newspaper stories about huge crowds and a long, long line of limos. . . .”

Here we go again.