City’s Development Fee Makes a ‘Big Splash’ : Art: The first work financed by the ‘Percent for Art’ program is on view at the relocated Greyhound Bus terminal.

Travelers using the newly relocated downtown Greyhound Bus terminal at 7th Street near Alameda have more than just a refurbished building to look at. Also on view is the first piece of art financed by a new city program that draws money for public art from assessments on commercial construction.

The artwork, a mural called “The Big Splash,” faces the terminal’s outdoor courtyard and depicts a waterfall, a highway, cacti, flowers and what its creator, artist Christina Schlesinger, describes as “the spirit of California and the thrill of travel.”

It is the first art project to be completed under the city’s Arts Development Fee, which became effective in May and applies retroactively to projects begun since January, 1989. The fee applies to most non-residential construction projects of more than $500,000, as well as many remodeling projects and is expected to pump millions of dollars into arts projects annually.

Known as the “Percent for Art” program, it mandates that up to 1% of construction budgets be spent either for on-site art such as murals and sculpture or be put into a city trust fund used to produce arts programs in the area served by the construction project.

“This is an important turning point in the cultural life and the quality of life in the city,” Adolfo Nodal, general manager of the city’s Cultural Affairs Department, said at the mural’s unveiling ceremonies Wednesday. “And it’s very fitting that we’re beginning this major new program with a mural, because murals are the most potent and most important public artworks that are developed in Los Angeles.”

According to Barbara Goldstein, the department’s planning director, Los Angeles is the first city nationwide to have a program applying to all construction projects in the city. Several other cities have similar programs, she said, but they apply only to specified areas, such as a downtown district or neighborhoods targeted for redevelopment.

The Arts Development Fee is expected to bring millions of dollars to the arts annually. In this fiscal year, for instance, about $10 million--including $8 million in actual on-site art projects and about $2 million in trust-fund dollars--is projected.

“It means that a lot of art is going to come out of the studio and into the streets,” Goldstein said. “We’re talking about places like shopping centers and office buildings; bringing art to people that wouldn’t normally encounter it, without having to drag them to a museum.”

About 40 projects are under way, although most will not be completed for about a year.

“They range from very complicated projects with many elements to quite simple projects, like a small mural on the ceiling of a warehouse,” Goldstein said. One of the largest is a major hotel complex with a “$600,000 art obligation,” she said. Others include a sculpture garden at a senior citizens home and relief panels to be painted by members of East L.A.’s Self-Help Graphics in a group of warehouses.

While the city anticipated some resistance from developers, Goldstein said: “it’s been much less (than we expected). Once developers realize they can do something on-site, in most cases they get very excited about it.”

The arts development fee grew out of Councilman Joel Wachs’ original 1985 proposal for the L.A. Endowment for the Arts, a multimillion-dollar trust fund administered by the city’s Cultural Affairs Department, which funds arts activities, including an annual $3-million grants program. The endowment is also funded by a percentage of the city’s hotel bed tax and additional money from the city’s general fund.