Watercourt Arrives With a Splash

Looking like a cross between a short Niagara Falls and a Disney theme park, the Watercourt arrived on downtown’s California Plaza with an opening gush Wednesday night.

More than 1,000 guests, including a wide range of community leaders, were there to witness the raging waters, and no fewer than nine performing arts groups--from the Kinnara Taiko Drummers to INCA, the Peruvian Ensemble to the 5th Dimension--took center lake. (The waters actually part to reveal a stage.)

The festivities benefited the Los Angeles Conservancy, a nonprofit organization that works to save historic places, because of California Plaza’s strategic location on historic Bunker Hill. When the Angel’s Flight funicular railway is restored some time next year, it will stop a few paces from the Watercourt, and the area “will link the past to the present and the future,” said Conservancy President Amy Forbes.

“This is L.A.’s newest historic site,” said Sally Stewart, past president of the conservancy and co-chair of the event with attorney and community activist John Welborne.

“It looks fantastic,” said Peter Ueberroth, chairman of Rebuild L.A. “It’s a celebration of L.A., and L.A. needs to remember it has a lot to celebrate.”

“It’s an incredible space in the middle of an urban environment,” said Joanne Kozberg, executive director of the California Arts Council. Of its proximity to the Museum of Contemporary Art, just up the block on Grand Avenue, she added, “To see the mass of arts here is so important for the city. It truly is a grand avenue.”

Among those attending were Watercourt Fountains architect Arthur Erickson (water technology was created by WET Design), Nyal Leslie, president of Metropolitan Structures, managing partner of California Plaza; Peggy Graham Hill of the First AME Church; Los Angeles Urban League executive director John Mack; Leticia Quezada of the L.A. Unified school board; Jae Min Chang, publisher of the Korea Times; art collector Fred Weisman; MOCA director Richard and Betty Koshalek, and C. Bernard Jackson, director of Inner City Cultural Center.

The massive fountain situated between office towers will be the site of an eclectic, ongoing program of free arts performances featuring mostly L.A.-based artists at lunchtime, weekends and evenings. The first free public concert by Poncho Sanchez takes place Tuesday at noon.

“The talent base in L.A. is incredible,” said Michael Alexander, artistic director for California Plaza’s Performing Arts Program. “We can look into communities that most people don’t know exist and find their treasures.”

Such as? “The Belizians were a group of slaves in the Caribbean exiled to British Honduras, and there are 40,000 Belizians in L.A. now. We found a group of their folk musicians,” said Alexander before he started shaking a bit. “Excuse me,” he said. “I’ve got to dance.”