Four Groups Interested in Using LATC

As a June 30 deadline draws near, several organizations have expressed interest in becoming a part of the municipal theater center on downtown’s Spring Street. But none have dealt conclusively with the issue of who will pay the bills, a major factor in the demise of its former occupant, the Los Angeles Theatre Center company.

The interim management of the center by the city’s Cultural Affairs Department is scheduled to end on June 30, according to a plan adopted last year by the City Council. On July 1, a new permanent operator is supposed to take over the building and manage it for the city.

The Mark Taper Forum, Shakespeare Festival/LA, and a consortium of artists known as Theatrelife have joined the previously reported Nederlander Organization on the list of applicants bidding for a role in the future of the building.

But the bidders generally sidestepped financial specifics in their submissions or said they couldn’t raise the sums mentioned in the request for proposals that was issued in January. In that request, applicants were told they would have to raise the money to pay annual facilities costs estimated between $655,000 and $1 million.

The Taper has proposed using two of the facility’s four theaters for 14 weeks of programming beginning in January. The idea is to do “an exploratory four-play season” and provide room for the former LATC company’s Latino Theatre Lab, said Karen Wood, Taper general manager.

However, “fiscal realities require that the facility overhead be provided,” said Wood.

The Taper plan also depends on acquiring additional funding for production expenses estimated at between $200,000 and $300,000, she added.

Shakespeare Festival/LA--the organization that presents alfresco Shakespeare in summer seasons at the John Anson Ford Theatre and Citicorp Plaza--would use only one of the LATC theaters, “providing a financial arrangement could be worked out that would make it feasible,” said artistic director Ben Donenberg. The group would use it during its own “off-season”--fall through spring.

Theatrelife is a consortium of artists, many of them associated with the former LATC company, organized by Theresa Larkin, a theater faculty member at Cal State L.A. It would focus on using the 99-seat Theatre 4 and rehearsal spaces, said Larkin, in conjunction with other groups brought in by the city.

“Fiscal accountability can’t be talked about until we know what in-kind support will be provided,” said Larkin. She acknowledged that her group is “the weakest of the potential proposals” but said Theatrelife wants to help restore life to the building “even if it’s a suicide mission.”

Even the most commercially oriented of the applicants, the Nederlander Organization, “did not make a financial proposal,” said Stan Seiden, president of Nederlander West. “We don’t know what our nut would be.”

In a budget document submitted to Mayor Tom Bradley last March, Cultural Affairs General Manager Adolfo V. Nodal estimated annual basic maintenance costs of $506,200 and an additional $243,800 that his department would need if it were to continue managing the building “should we fail to attract a major operator . . . Should we prevail in finding an operator, (the $243,800) would not be needed.”

It was the inability of the former LATC company to come up with facilities payments that led to its collapse last year, soon after the city stopped paying those bills as part of its agreement to purchase the building and pay off the construction debt.

Besides a financial plan, other “evaluation criteria” that a Cultural Affairs committee will consider are artistic qualifications, community/cultural diversity, managerial capability and the clarity and soundness of each applicant’s overall plan.

Nodal expects the committee to complete its business by June 15, 15 days before the city’s interim management of the building is slated to end.

The committee’s recommendation will go to the City Council, which will make the final decision. Most observers doubt that a long-term operator will be selected by June 30. Seiden said he had been told by Cultural Affairs officials that a decision wouldn’t be made until July or August.

Nodal said Thursday that a decision could be made that would incorporate several of the applicants’ proposals. Or, he noted, the city could choose “to maintain it the way it is”--with limited use on a rental basis.

He confirmed that he hasn’t “talked figures” with the applicants yet. “We’re focusing on what we want. Then we’ll negotiate, and figure out how to do it.”

The financial risks of presenting shows at LATC were driven home this week by the cancellation of the rest of the run of “El Cuarto Poder,” a Spanish-language musical that lasted only three performances in the building’s largest theater, where it had been scheduled to run through June 14.

The show’s author and producing director, Jorge Luis Rodriguez, blamed the recent riots and citywide curfew that led to cancellation of performances as the primary cause of his show’s premature demise.

Rodriguez also noted that Cinco de Mayo festivities on April 25 closed Spring Street, making access to the theater more difficult, and that construction on Spring Street right now makes the neighborhood “look like a disaster area.”

Rodriguez said his company, Stage of the Arts, lost $95,000 on “El Cuarto Poder” and that he still owes $20,650 to the city for rental of the theater, equipment and labor costs.