DISNEY HALL BACKGROUND

In May, 1987, Lillian Disney contributed $50 million toward construction of a new concert hall for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. A field of 25 international architects was narrowed down to four finalists by March, 1988, and in December of that year, Frank Gehry was selected. Later, he was also asked to design a proposed 350-room luxury hotel next to the hall.

What’s happening now? Construction will begin soon on a room-size acoustical model of the hall’s interior. But Disney Hall chairman Frederick M. Nicholas says that the hall’s final design and exterior can’t be completed “until it is known whether the hotel will be on the site and how much county money will be available to construct the garage.”

As Nicholas explains it, the county wants a 3,000-car garage--for general purposes as well as for concerts--but Disney Hall needs only 1,500 spaces to satisfy code requirements. Until the county decides how many spaces it can afford, construction, which could take two years, is delayed.

Other delays--including a current labor dispute between the Community Redevelopment Agency and the hotel’s developer--have added to the cost, Nicholas confirms.

Disney Hall is expected to cost $100 million, Nicholas says, of which $75 million is already available for design and construction costs. He says that the Music Center, together with the Disney family, has agreed to raise the remaining $25 million. Disney Hall is not expected to open before 1996 and at this point would share its site at First and Grand with the separately financed hotel. One of Gehry’s prime design concepts, the glass-enclosed foyer, is now smaller.

Adjustments continue. Economic concerns may lead to scrapping an adjacent chamber hall and more scaling back of Gehry’s prized foyer. But Gehry apparently tries to think positively about such possibilities: Getting rid of the chamber hall, whose funding, he says, was never set anyway, could give the designers a lot more room sculpturally.