Disagreements Doom Plans for Downtown Dance Gallery

Organizers have abandoned efforts to construct a $25-million Dance Gallery facility in the California Plaza redevelopment project downtown after a parting of the ways between the institutions that had planned to share the performing, rehearsal and training space at 4th and Olive streets.

Leaders of the Dance Gallery organization announced Friday that they will not proceed with plans to build the center, which was to have been used by their group and the R.D. Colburn School of Performing Arts. The organizations could not agree on a number of issues, including how to share the facility, said Martin I. Kagan, Dance Gallery president.

The project was to have been funded with $5 million from the Colburn School, $5.5 million from the Community Redevelopment Agency, $1 million from Bunker Hill Associates (the developer of California Plaza) and $2 million in cash and pledges to the Dance Gallery. The rest of the construction costs were to be financed by tax-exempt bonds through the CRA. The facility would have opened by September, 1994, Kagan said.

The partnership between the Dance Gallery and the Colburn School started to fall apart when the Colburn School asked to be released from its Jan. 6 letter of intent that offered to provide the Gallery with $5 million to begin construction.

At its June 18 meeting, the Dance Gallery Board of Trustees voted to grant the Colburn request, Kagan said. The trustees also voted to dissolve by June 30 all Dance Gallery operations concerning plans to build the performance center at California Plaza.

“Because of the current economic climate, its effect on funding for the arts in Los Angeles, the history of the project and the lack of realistic alternatives . . . there was no recourse but to vote, at its meeting, to close operations,” the board said in its statement.

Jim Wood, board chairman of the CRA, said he was “surprised and saddened” by news of the Dance Gallery’s impending dissolution.

Planned for more than a decade, the Dance Gallery originally sought to incorporate a 1,000-seat theater, a smaller performance space, rehearsal studios, a library, physical therapy room and training institute in the same facility.

In its early stages, the project was planned for completion before the 1984 Olympics, but funding shortfalls caused a number of delays and led to the loss of a previous site in California Plaza.

Dance Gallery executives blamed the shortfalls on a CRA demand that all funding be in place before any construction could begin. This demand led fund-raisers to step up their search for a $5-million “naming donor” to guarantee construction costs.

In April, 1991, Kagan announced a Dec. 31, 1991, deadline to obtain the $5 million or forfeit any chance of building in California Plaza. The deadline was extended, and by mid-January the Colburn School had emerged as the potential $5-million naming donor.

Toby Mayman, executive director of the Colburn School, said Friday that Dance Gallery demands for an immediate commitment to the project caused her organization to withdraw. She said the school would not commit because it was exploring “other options.” She would not elaborate.