He’s Perfecting the Art of Getting Along : Culture: Under Tom Tomlinson, the Orange County Performing Arts Center mends fences.

Twelve months after taking over the top job at Orange County’s largest arts institution, Tom Tomlinson looks no worse for wear. Movie-star tan and not a blond hair out of place, he gives the outward appearance of operating on cruise control.

In fact, he works off stress by running 50 miles a week. And his style of leadership draws nothing but raves from the people who work with him. One local arts executive calls him “a problem-solver.” Another lauds him as “a consensus-builder.” Nobody in almost a dozen interviews has anything negative to say about him, not even off the record.

Sitting in his wood-paneled office at the 8-year-old Orange County Performing Arts Center, where he presides as chief operating officer over a 3,000-seat hall and a budget of roughly $20 million, Tomlinson wonders aloud what a paragon he must be to have created such an impression.

“Gee,” he says, evincing the open, youthful manner everyone talks about, “this sounds too good to be true.”

That he is personally accessible, gregarious and self-effacing--all terms used by various associates to describe him--seems beyond question. But have those attributes translated into policy decisions aimed at taking the center in new directions? Or has Tomlinson simply chosen to reaffirm the old directions since officially stepping into his post a year ago?

The answer, perhaps not surprisingly, is a little of both.

By all accounts, the 44-year-old Spokane, Wash., native has shown a willingness to recast the center’s institutional image from the haughty dowager of the arts community to a friendlier, less lofty doyenne in cautious but meaningful ways.

- He has made signficant overtures to the center’s three major resident companies--the Pacific Symphony Orchestra, the Orange County Philharmonic Society (which brings in touring ensembles and soloists) and Opera Pacific--with offers of collaborative programming. This has helped patch up wounds from a prickly cultural turf battle that arose before he came.

- He has improved the play dates for the two smaller resident companies--the Pacific Chorale and the Master Chorale--within the limited wiggle room of the center’s heavily booked schedule. This has soothed wounded pride over past treatment that made them feel like hangers-on.

- He has backed the idea of an architectural structure in the center lobby to provide on-site donor recognition for all five resident companies, which they long had sought without success. A cost-sharing study and design meetings are underway.

“What I’m trying to do,” he says, “is see that bridges are built among the organizations and in the public mind.”

Compared with his previous experiences, he considers whatever corrective measures he has taken at the privately funded, $73-million center to be minimal.

He came here from Anchorage, Alaska, where he had run the $70-million Alaska Center for the Performing Arts since its opening in 1988. Before that three-theater complex, he ran the Rialto Square Theatre in Joliet, Ill., the Pantages Center for the Performing Arts in Tacoma, Wash., and the Capitol Theatre in Yakima, Wash.

“Usually, after a brief time at a new place, you discover there are a bunch of things nobody told you about,” says Tomlinson, who keeps photos of those halls above the sofa in his office. “There were no surprises here. If I can put any capsule around it, there’s been very little remedial work to do. . . .

“We’re doing cooperative programming with the symphony and the Philharmonic Society. But I’d like to think that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We really can see a much more collaborative arts scene, some of which the center can facilitate and some of which it can lead.”

The most immediate example will be the joint presentation Oct. 13 of Michael Nyman, the British composer-pianist whose score for Jane Campion’s “The Piano” catapulted him to fame. The center and the Pacific Symphony are sponsoring the concert to offer a “new music” artist not previously seen here.

“It was Tom’s idea,” says Louis G. Spisto, executive director of the Pacific Symphony. “Michael Nyman has a big following, but he’s a niche market. He’s the kind of classical crossover none of us had brought in before. I think Tom has added a dimension of leadership at the center that reflects his personal style. He’s very open.”

The most extraordinary instance of a cooperative venture could be a two-night engagement in May of the Metropolitan Opera orchestra led by James Levine. Although the deal has yet to be signed, the center, Opera Pacific and the Pacific Symphony are making joint plans to sponsor what could be the orchestra’s only Southern California stop on a rare national tour that, as of now, will stop at just eight halls.

“I think that project is an example of the center reaching out to us as it was brainstorming,” says David DiChiera, Opera Pacific’s general manager. “The center made contact with the Met before Tom arrived. But it was Tom who came to us and told us this was a possibility. He wanted to involve us.”

Equally important, the jointly sponsored concerts would signal that the center isn’t about to let the nearby Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts steal its thunder.

This season’s top attractions, from Leontyne Price and England’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to Tony Bennett, will be found at the publicly funded, $60-million Cerritos hall just north of the county line.

Other major artists have by-passed the center for Cerritos during the past two seasons, among them violinist Isaac Stern and cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, the St. Louis Symphony and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.

But the most striking challenge to the center’s preeminence was the loss of the prestigious Boston Symphony Orchestra to Cerritos for next season. The blow seemed especially stunning to the Philharmonic Society, which made the bid to present the orchestra.

“Cerritos had their offer in first, but we came in right after and slightly higher,” says Dean Corey, the society’s executive director. “We’re not really sure why we didn’t get it.

“They’ve got the newer hall, and because of the stuff they’re slamming in there its reputation is high around the country. Also, they’re in Los Angeles County, so it’s considered an L.A. date--and that counts a lot.”

What’s more, Corey notes, “when an agent calls Cerritos, he can seal the deal right over the phone. We can’t do that. We have to check dates with the center before we get back. But what was real good for us in that whole thing was how supportive the center was. They really streamlined the process.”

Last week, moreover, the Philharmonic Society announced that it has booked two stellar recitalists for next season at the center: soprano Cecilia Bartoli, the latest Italian opera sensation, and star violinist Itzhak Perlman.

Tomlinson doesn’t believe Cerritos has had much if any impact on audience attendance at the Orange County center, despite recent declines from earlier years. “The population base is just too big,” he says. “But Cerritos does have the potential to impact perception. That’s why we’ve been careful to show that we’re a premiere venue.”

To maintain that identity, he is sticking closely to the programming formula of his predecessor, Thomas R. Kendrick, who long ago spelled out his philosophy as “the four disciplines”--musical theater, dance, opera and classical music. Indeed, when Tomlinson arrived, he noted that he had no intention of disturbing the formula.

It not only had proven effective in drawing large crowds, it had helped maintain a conservative institutional image that appealed to the elite donors at the heart of the center’s huge fund-raising base. And no arts organization in the county has a greater need or ability to raise funds.

With annual expenditures for 1995 tentatively projected at $19.2 million, the center dwarfs all its resident companies. This year’s budget, swollen by the cost of presenting “The Phantom of the Opera” for a sold-out, six-week engagement this summer, came to $22.6 million. Last year’s budget came to $19.8 million.

But except for its Broadway offerings, all the center’s attractions must be subsidized to cover the gap between outlays and box-office revenue. This is especially true of the center’s hugely expensive ballet series, regarded as Kendrick’s great accomplishment.

The center raised a total of $4.9 million in contributions last year. This year Tomlinson anticipates fund-raising needs at $5.4 million.

Because the “Phantom” grossed more than $7 million, of which the center kept roughly $700,000, Tomlinson says he has “a little breathing room” to cover basic inflation in oerating costs. He’s already looking for another mega-hit musical to fill the house next summer.

Still, if he wants to put his own programming stamp on the center, a second, smaller concert hall will have to be built to free up the already congested schedule. The center has fewer than two dozen dark nights a year, and those nights are wild cards, difficult to fill because they’re used as scheduling buffers to jockey play dates for the theatrical runs (opera, ballet and musicals).

Until a second hall is built, Tomlinson can only tinker around the edges of the center’s programming, bringing in a show here, a concert there, which may or may not conform to Kendrick’s preordained formula.

“The opportunity for me to make significant program changes is limited at best,” he concedes. “We’ve filled in more single dates than before, but those kinds of things don’t really make a big impression.”

How long will he have to wait to make his own programming mark? A long time, apparently.

Thomas H. Nielsen, chairman of the center’s board of directors, says the issue of a new concert hall “remains out there” but is not even on the horizon. “It would be some time after the turn of the century before we see another facility,” he predicts.

Tomlinson is unfazed. He points to a spiral-bound, color-coded pamphlet on the coffee table in his office. It outlines the center’s outreach programs, a one-stop shopping guide for educators that hadn’t been published before.

“I hope if I leave a mark at all, it’s something like this,” he says, “something of benefit to the community.”