Report Offers Revisions to Try to Save Disney Hall

The proposed Disney Concert Hall can be built for $200 million--twice 1992 estimates--but only with significant design changes and a 1996 start date for construction, according to a report released Friday.

Houston-based Hines Interests--hired by Disney Hall officials to study the Downtown project, which has been plagued by increasing cost estimates--calls for changing the exterior of the Frank O. Gehry-designed structure from white Italian limestone to metal and eliminating or modifying interior staircases and chambers.

Gehry, who is traveling, could not be reached for comment.

Keeping costs within a new estimate of $197,817,208 would also require construction to start by July 1, 1996. That date may be unrealistic. The project has in hand about $97 million in gifts and accrued interest from the Disney family, as well as $3 million from other sources. But the county of Los Angeles, which built on county-owned land the underground parking garage that would be the hall’s foundation, is requiring that 95% of the $100 million needed to be raised be committed before construction starts.

If construction is delayed, costs would rise by about $9 million for each year of delay for the next two years, according to the report.

County Chief Administrative Officer Sally Reed said Friday that although county officials have yet to read the report, the basic numbers are “pretty much as we expected” and that the county has not made a decision on whether to allow concert hall development to proceed.

Harry Hufford, chief executive of Disney Hall I, the oversight committee for the hall, acknowledged that the $200-million estimate is “optimistic” in light of fund-raising requirements but gives Disney Hall officials and the county a “base point” for deciding whether to proceed with the project.

Hufford added that Disney Hall officials will continue to work to raise funds for the hall pending a final collective decision by the county, the Los Angeles Music Center (of which Disney Hall will become part), the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the architects and the Disney family on whether l construction should begin.

The project’s fate was expected to be decided later this month, but no timetable has been set for action.

The project was initiated in 1987 by a gift of $50 million from Lillian B. Disney, Walt Disney’s widow. Other funding includes a longstanding $1 million gift from Toyota and a February pledge of $2 million from the Parsons Foundation.

The project suffered spiraling cost estimates late last year, which caused work on the hall to be temporarily halted. The county has nearly completed construction on a 2,500-space underground parking garage at the site at 1st Street and Grand Avenue.

In December, the county threatened to declare the Disney Hall project in default, but agreed to wait for the Hines report before taking any such action. Reed said the report has not immediately changed the county’s position, although some items raise questions. For example, she said, she expected that fund-raising would take the project beyond the proposed July, 1996, start date for construction.

“It’s still wait-and-see,” Reed said. “We need to talk with (Disney Hall officials) and see what happens next; they have to take (the Hines report) and decide how they are going to raise this kind of money. I think that the people that I have talked to expect that to take some time.”

Besides the Hines estimate, Reed said, “we also need final plans and specifications, and firm construction cost after that.”

County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said Friday that he had not seen the Hines report, but added that it did not change the problems Disney Hall faces.

“I think this project is a project at a precarious state, and has been for some time,” he said. “I guess the bottom line is that if there is not one or more private individuals who are willing to invest (large donations) in this project, then the project is going to be in trouble.”