Plans for the LATC Site Coalition Are Coalescing

The city’s Cultural Affairs Department has filled in some of the blanks on its proposal for the future of the municipal theater complex on Spring Street.

Details of the plan, which must be approved by the City Council before it can be enacted, are emerging just in time to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the collapse of the Los Angeles Theatre Center company that formerly occupied the premises.

As reported earlier, the proposal calls for a cooperative of organizations to serve as the primary users of the facility; each member will make a three-year commitment to producing there. But the requirement that each member pay an annual fee--which would have raised $100,000, according to a Cultural Affairs estimate last June--has been dropped. To make up for it, co-op members will pay the same rental rates as anyone else, rather than the discounted rates mentioned in earlier reports, according to Cultural Affairs General Manager Adolfo V. Nodal, who said he believed the same amount of revenue could be raised.

Joining the nine organizations that already were announced as co-op members is Co-Real Artists, described as a group “celebrating African-American music, poetry, dance and theater.”

Another member of the cooperative, the Artists’ Collective, has added the Black Theatre Artist Workshop to the ranks of former LATC labs that have united under its banner. The Black Workshop had abandoned the building last winter, declaring that the city charged too much. But then city officials “made us an offer that was difficult to refuse,” said the workshop’s leader, Shabaka.

“It looks as if the city is ready to get things rolling,” he added.

But is the City Council ready? After reading Nodal’s proposal last week, Councilwoman Joy Picus--a member of the committee that will act on it prior to the entire Council (both dates unknown)--labeled parts of it “glib” and said “it might be better to spin off a separate entity” to run the building, instead of Cultural Affairs.

But Nodal expressed confidence in his department’s ability to run the building, which he said should be “a civic theater . . . with a community vision, not the vision of any one entrepreneur.”

Besides requesting an annual $750,000 in city funds to maintain the facility, the Cultural Affairs proposal urges the Community Redevelopment Agency to spend $190,000 to buy equipment inside the building from the former LATC company, which is undergoing bankruptcy proceedings.

It suggests hiring four members of the stagehands’ union, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employes (IATSE), to serve as a technical director and staff, but it also endorses hiring the Theatix firm to handle ticketing (by phone) instead of a union-staffed box office, and it rejects the notion of using the same Actors’ Equity contract that the old LATC company used as a house contract.

“Much of the diverse programming and audience mix of potential cooperative members will be jeopardized if the cost . . . becomes prohibitive because of union requirements,” wrote Nodal.

The proposal outlines several steps that might increase security, discourage panhandling, spruce up the neighborhood, lower parking rates, and encourage a restaurant to return to the adjacent building. One such idea would eliminate the bus-only lane immediately in front of the building, allowing easier drop-off for patrons.

Cultural Affairs also has announced some of the tentative bookings planned for the coming year. Most would be brief runs; among the longest anticipated bookings in the three larger theaters are three to four weeks of Will & Co.’s “Comedy of Errors” and “The Three Musketeers,” designed for children; four weeks of “Molly Brewster’s Fabulous Flying Machine,” featuring Phyllis Frelich and presented in sign language by Airshow, and Bilingual Foundation of the Arts productions of “B/C” and “Contrabando.” All three presenters are members of the planned cooperative.