Consortium Ahead for LATC Site? : Stage: Cultural Affairs chief also says the center will require $750,000 a year from the city for maintenance. Two key City Council members are skeptical.

The municipal theater complex on Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles will require at least $750,000 a year in city funds--and a consortium of several organizations rather than one single operator--if it is to remain active, according to Adolfo V. Nodal, general manager of the city’s Cultural Affairs Department.

After a fruitless five-month search for a sole private operator who would assume the costs of running the complex, which formerly housed the Los Angeles Theatre Center company, Nodal is proposing that the city form a nonprofit corporation consisting of several arts organizations. Members of this consortium would raise the money for their own productions and chip in an undetermined fee. But the city would pay for the maintenance of the building--now estimated at $750,000 annually.

The City Council ended a similar maintenance subsidy with the LATC company last year--leading to the collapse of the company soon after the city withdrew its funds.

Nodal’s proposal, made at a Friday afternoon press conference, will need council acceptance. However, that may be difficult, judging from preliminary comments by two key council members.

“I’m very skeptical,” said Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky. “The city is literally broke. I’m going to Sacramento to beg for money, so I’m not too tickled about this proposal.”

Councilwoman Joy Picus questioned why “we’d be willing to put money into something we don’t know” when the council was unwilling, just last year, to heed her advice and continue supporting an established, award-winning company. “My heart’s not in it,” said Picus of the new proposal. “I’m blah about it.”

But Nodal said he “can’t fathom closing” the facility, which has already cost the city more than $27 million. “It would be a great loss to this community.” He pointed to recent signs of progress in cleaning and relighting the seedy neighborhood that surrounds the theater as evidence that the area, and the theater, may be ripe for resuscitation.

Nearly half of the $750,000 in city money that Nodal says is needed would come from the Community Redevelopment Agency--the source of most of the funding for the facility during the six years in which it was operated by the LATC company. So far, the agency “has indicated their willingness to think about it, or at least not to shred our letter,” quipped Nodal.

CRA officials did not return telephone calls. But longtime CRA nemesis Yaroslavsky warned that CRA support could lead to “weaning the Theatre Center back onto the CRA, like a narcotic.”

Nodal spoke of a different kind of weaning. “Our best hope,” he said, “is that the consortium could take over in three years and wean itself away from the city.” However, he added, “I’m not sure if they could ever take over the maintenance payments.”

Nodal hopes to issue an official request for applications from organizations that would like to join the proposed consortium, and he said he might be able to announce the results in six to eight weeks. He has enough already authorized money to keep operating the building with a skeletal crew, but he said that it wasn’t clear how much additional authorization he needs from the council to proceed with his plan.

In the meantime, the four organizations that already submitted proposals--as part of the Cultural Affairs effort to find a permanent operator to take over the building--have indicated they would be willing to join the consortium, said Nodal.

But “that depends,” said Stan Seiden, the West Coast president of the Nederlander Organization, one of the four applicants. “We’d want to see with whom we’re getting into bed. It would have to be people with the wherewithal. We don’t want (other organizations) to go through that revolving door on our push.”

The Nederlander proposal, the most commercially oriented of the four, was supported by City Councilman Hal Bernson, said Bernson spokesman Ali Sar. He added that he doesn’t know how Bernson, who is traveling outside the country, will respond to the consortium idea.

Another applicant, Shakespeare Festival/LA, would “have no problem working with other groups,” said executive director Ben Donenberg. But he also said Cultural Affairs “would have to help us find the money to pay for the programming.” Donenberg’s entire proposal consisted of two sentences, and a member of the committee that reviewed the proposals said it was clear that Cultural Affairs had solicited Donenberg rather than vice versa.

Both remaining applicants, Center Theatre Group and a coalition of former LATC labs known as Theatrelife, suggested the creation of a consortium as part of their proposals.

The CTG proposal, released by Nodal Friday, was more specific than the others at listing plays that might be produced at the city complex. Heading the list was a new play by David Mamet, “The Old Neighborhood.”

Nodal suggested that some additional underwriting for the complex might be available through his department’s Arts Recovery Program, launched in response to the L.A. riots that began April 29.

One member of the Cultural Affairs advisory committee that reviewed the proposals emphasized that the building “has a key advantage of being on neutral turf on ethnic and racial lines” and therefore can serve as an ideal venue for artistic meetings of the minds across racial and class lines in the post-Rodney King era.

Yaroslavsky mocked this line of thought: “Since April 29, if you want public money, you say you’re part of the rebuild effort.”