Delays and Cost Increases Impact Getty Center : Development: Arts complex in Brentwood may take $650 million to complete, sources say. Opening date is pushed back to 1996.

A variety of unexpected hurdles encountered in building the Getty Center, the huge arts complex now taking shape on a hilltop above Brentwood, have led to major cost increases, according to sources familiar with the project.

J. Paul Getty Trust officials held elaborate news conferences in New York and Los Angeles this month to unveil detailed plans for the center. They described a $360-million complex that will include a museum, office space for the trust’s many art and art education organizations, an auditorium, research and conservation laboratories, and guest quarters for visiting scholars.

Sources familiar with the project, however, say its total cost is expected to be about $650 million--provided there are no further delays or surprises. And though the center was originally expected to be finished by now, the new opening date target is 1996.

Trust officials and trustees contacted by The Times refused to talk about the overall cost of Getty Center, which is privately funded. In general, the Getty trust has been secretive about what it is spending. For example, officials reluctantly released to The Times financial data they are required to make public as a tax-exempt charitable trust.

Getty officials insisted that they are keeping a close watch on expenditures, and that all the money appears to be well allocated and is being spent in a timely manner. But they acknowledge that there have been some unexpected hitches and long delays because of bureaucratic wrangling and efforts to get Brentwood homeowners to support the project.

In all, the building of Getty Center--designed to be a lasting monument to the arts in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains--has been a contentious and expensive process.

“It has taken longer than everybody hoped and anticipated when all this started,” said Stephen D. Rountree, director of operations and planning for the trust, an endowment started by the oil baron and art collector, who died in 1976.

Harold M. Williams, trust president and chief executive officer, said the initial estimates were far off because Getty officials had not taken their vision of the project to the drawing board, or to city planners.

“We didn’t have any idea how big the project was going to be, or how long it would take,” said Williams, the former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission who also serves on the board of directors of Times Mirror Co., parent company of The Times. “It turned out to be a much more complex project than any of us had envisioned.”

Williams, Rountree and other Getty officials were insistent on not talking about the entire cost of the project, citing several reasons. They said their announced $360-million figure, for direct construction, is a fair one because it can be used to compare the cost of the project to other museums.

That price does not include indirect or “soft” costs, such as site work, professional fees, administrative costs and permit, inspection and testing charges. When all costs are added, it comes closer to $650 million, the sources said.

Trust officials said many of the major construction contracts have not been awarded, so it is impossible to be precise about the final cost. They said architect Richard Meier, chosen for the project from a field of 30 renowned architects, has spared no expense or detail in designing a project that conforms to the natural contours of the 110-acre site.

Rountree and others said they also are trying hard to avoid giving an impression that the Getty--the world’s richest endowment for the visual arts with assets of $3.7 billion--has bottomless pockets and can throw money into the project without regard for cost-effectiveness. For some time, Rountree said, people on the “New York cocktail circuit” have been circulating rumors that the complex may cost $1 billion, a figure he said was “wildly exaggerated.”

“The whole aura of being such a well-endowed institution is the genesis for some of these concerns” and demands for secrecy, he said.

Rocco Siciliano, a member of the Getty board of trustees and chairman of the trust committee overseeing the project, likewise maintains that the trust is being frugal, but he also says critics need to bear in mind the extraordinary nature of the project.

“We are not throwing money out,” Siciliano said. “This will not be a white elephant. It will be a fantastically unique art resource unlike anything else in the world.”

Transforming their vision to construction, trustees acknowledge, has been harder than they imagined.

City planners have required Getty officials to seek three approvals of their plans, Rountree said. Each go-round, he said, resulted in “literally months and months and months” of meetings and delays.

The first construction project, a 1,200-car underground garage, was delayed and went at least $2 million over budget when it was discovered that the ground, adjacent to the San Diego Freeway, had to be shored up with concrete, according to Getty officials.

Because the center will house up to $1 billion in artworks, Getty officials are insisting on an elaborate and costly system of seismic reinforcements. Meier’s services have not been cheap, either: Although Getty officials refuse to say what the architect is charging, documents on file with the state Registry of Charitable Trusts show that his firm was paid at least $2.1 million in 1990.

Rountree, in a letter released at the project’s unveiling, diplomatically described an expensive internal process in which more than 50 key Getty personnel tried to agree on what the complex should contain and how it should be designed. To do so, Rountree wrote, they had to “listen, respond to and work with an unusually large number of relatively independent, determined clients.”

Williams said he and other Getty leaders have continually re-evaluated the project’s size and design in the face of mounting delays and costs but have decided to stick with Meier’s original plan of using many interrelated buildings in a campus-like setting.

And all during that time, the Getty has had to contend with widespread concern--and sometimes outright hostility--from individuals and community groups in Brentwood. One neighbor threatened to file suit to thwart construction of what he called “the toy of a rich, Westside elite.”

A conditional use permit, approved in 1985, included 107 conditions, filling 12 single-space pages, regarding traffic, pollution, noise, access, environmental concerns and building heights. More were added later.

For now, Getty’s numerous compromises and community outreach efforts appear to have won over most residents.

“That doesn’t mean everyone in Brentwood is thrilled,” Rountree said, “but most people are.”

City Councilman Marvin Braude, who represents Brentwood, said the nature of the project--”in effect a small city”--has complicated and prolonged the planning and approval process. “If they wanted to do it on the cheap, they could have stuck it all in one building.”

“I wish all developers were as cooperative and public-spirited as the Getty people,” Braude added. “This would be a different city if that were the case.”