Deal for Taper Satellite Theater Collapses

The Mark Taper Forum’s plan to open a mid-size theater and a performance art space at the Bergamot Station art gallery complex in Santa Monica has collapsed because of a dispute between the developers of the arts complex, a landowner and the philanthropist financing the theater’s proposed satellite project.

Since April, Taper artistic director Gordon Davidson had talked frequently of plans to expand the downtown-based theater to the Westside, where he hoped to build audiences for experimental and small-scale projects.

Until the deal collapsed Wednesday, millionaire artist Hiro Yamagata had planned to purchase three buildings in the complex for about $3.4 million and lease the largest one to the Taper for $1 a year.

That building was owned by American Appliance Mfg. Corp., while the two smaller buildings were owned by Bergamot Partners, developer of the complex. Yamagata had planned to have a studio and performance space of his own in the additional spaces.

“The buildings had to be sold from two parties to one party to move forward, and that deal couldn’t be consummated,” Davidson said.

Escrow, originally scheduled to close Dec. 15, had been extended through January to allow time for further negotiations. But Yamagata and the two sellers “could not come to agreement on the whole package, and everything was interlocked,” Davidson said.

The negotiations hit a rough spot in mid-December, when American Appliance requested an additional $50,000 deposit after agreement was not reached by the original closing date. An attorney for the company, Ed Hackney, confirmed that “we sought additional money to defer additional costs we would incur” at that point, “but we decided to forgo it because the buyers were reluctant.”

However, Yamagata became “insulted” by the request, said Wayne Blank, one of the Bergamot Partners and a gallery owner in the complex.

Yamagata could not be reached for comment, but his attorney Channing Johnson said, “Hiro wasn’t prepared to jump through hoops to do good. . . . He wasn’t prepared to have a transaction shoved down his throat in a certain amount of time.”

The thorniest problems in the negotiations were “for the most part” raised by American Appliance, Johnson said. “Our issues with Bergamot Partners were resolvable.”

Hackney said American Appliance remains ready to do business with Bergamot Partners. Under terms of the proposal, the American Appliance building would have been sold to Bergamot Partners, which would transfer it to Yamagata. The deal between American Appliance and Bergamot is reliant upon someone stepping forward to finance the project.

Both Blank and Davidson said they would continue to see if a plan could go forward without Yamagata’s participation, but Davidson said, “I don’t know if I can duplicate” Yamagata’s offer to buy the buildings and then lease them to the Taper for $1 a year.

Yamagata was the Taper’s “white knight,” Blank said.