County Agrees to Give Disney Hall Builders More Time : Government: Supervisors extend construction deadline up to four years to allow a $130-million fund-raising drive by project backers. Lack of funds has hampered the ambitious effort.

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved an agreement that would give the builders of the new Disney Concert Hall more time to raise money for the beleaguered project and start construction.

The ambitious project to build a new home for the Los Angeles Philharmonic has run into a number of setbacks, most significantly a cost estimate that has ballooned to $197 million--more than twice the original estimate.

At the same time, Disney Hall officials have been hampered by a lack of committed funding beyond the initial $50 million bequest from Lillian B. Disney, Walt Disney’s widow.

County officials have become concerned about the project’s fortunes as a 2,500-space underground parking garage at the county-owned site at 1st Street and Grand Avenue nears completion and threatened to declare the Disney project in default of its lease agreement.

Sally Reed, the county’s chief administrative officer, on Tuesday, however, said some of those fears have been allayed and urged the board to extend the deadline for construction.

“Disney I [the hall’s oversight committee] is in the process of beginning a new fund-raising effort which seeks to raise an additional $130 million,” she said. “We believe an [extension] will afford Disney I the opportunity to achieve its fund-raising goals while still maintaining the financial safeguards which protect the county’s interests.”

Terms of the agreement call for Disney builders to complete the garage by February, 1996, in a manner that would accommodate the concert hall or some other type of future construction.

In turn, Disney I would have up to four years to achieve its fund-raising goals and begin construction of the concert hall.

Harry Hufford, chief executive for Disney Hall I, said Tuesday he was pleased with the county’s action and optimistic that the group will meet its fund-raising goals. “We’ve been given a tremendous opportunity and now it’s up to us to determine if the community will support this hall,” Hufford said. “We think they will.”

In other action Tuesday, the board weighed in on the increasingly divisive issue of affirmative action, expressing overall support for diversity efforts but declining to oppose a proposed state constitutional amendment that would prohibit government affirmative action programs.

Because the proposed amendment has not been approved for the ballot by the Legislature, or gathered the requisite number of signatures to qualify for a statewide vote, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky argued that adoption of a position would be premature.

He urged the board to “affirm its support for successful affirmative action proposals” but at the same time “affirm its opposition to racial and gender quotas as a basis for hiring and promotions.”

Yaroslavsky also successfully urged the board to review county affirmative action programs “which have not worked to their full potential and which could stand considerable improvement or change.”

Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who had brought the original motion to oppose the proposed constitutional amendment, accepted Yaroslavsky substitute motion and it was approved unanimously.

A number of speakers who addressed the board in support of Burke’s original motion were not pleased.

Joy Howell, a businesswoman who is a member of the National Association of Women Business Owners, said the proposed constitutional amendment remains a threat and called Yaroslavsky’s introduction of the quota issue a “red herring.”

“I take issue with the fact they said it’s not before us right now, so let’s ignore it,” said Howell. “The point is to stop it in its tracks right now.”