Without Concert Hall, Garage Draws Few Cars

The Disney Concert Hall Garage is now open, complete with a dramatic clay-colored lobby and stainless-steel escalators that smoothly descend six stories below 1st Street and Grand Avenue. However, since the downtown concert hall above exists only in imagination, the parking facility is expected to be a big money loser for Los Angeles County for at least the next five years.

“The reality is we are going to have a tab here that very frankly we are in no position to pay,” county Supervisor Gloria Molina said Tuesday during a debate about a management contract for the 2,370-space garage.

The county was counting on parking fees from concert audiences to help pay off the $81.5 million in bonds it issued to build the garage. But the flower-like auditorium complex designed by architect Frank O. Gehry remains unbuilt as backers seek private donations for construction costs that have more than doubled original estimates.

The $100 or so that garage cashiers collected in its first three days of operation last week won’t make much of a dent in the bond debt, officials conceded. Nor, it seemed, would fees from the 64 cars parked there at midday Tuesday, since most were free-entry vehicles of construction workers putting final touches on the subterranean project.

In the fiscal year that starts July 1, the county will use interest from the bond account to reduce its annual garage bond payment to about $287,000. But the bond bills will total $4.4 million the next year and continue to rise until the final tab of $24.4 million in the year 2022-23, officials said.

Even if many nearby office workers start using the garage and the county shifts some juror and employee parking there, the garage won’t generate enough revenue without the new home for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, said Sally Reed, the county’s chief administrative officer. Fees are now set at $2.50 per 20 minutes with a $15 daily maximum and a $132 monthly charge. The garage is now open only Mondays through Fridays, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.

“It is a parking garage we would never have built unless a concert hall was being built as well,” Reed said. “But given the fact it is done, we will bring in what revenue we can and are going to have to make up the difference.”

She described the task as difficult given the county’s ongoing budget crisis.

The missing concert hall has provoked jests about what to do with the open space above the garage on county-owned land. Among the suggestions in a recent tongue-in-cheek poll in the Downtown News were a golf putting range and a topless dancing arena.

Such jokes don’t please Harry Hufford, the chief executive officer of the Walt Disney Concert Hall Committee. That group has $115.4 million in hand or pledged, including about $103 million in gifts and interest from Walt Disney’s widow, Lillian B. Disney, and is trying to raise an additional $149.5 million. According to a recent reorganization plan, the committee must find at least $50 million by June 1997 or the county will terminate the project.

“Yes, it is a challenge. Nobody is telling you it is going to be easy,” Hufford said. “But there is a lot of good will out there, and I certainly think this project has a good chance of success.”

On Tuesday, county supervisors discussed a proposal to award an 18-month contract to manage the garage to Parking Concepts, the firm that also operates garages beneath the nearby Music Center buildings. Under the Disney garage proposal, the county would pay the company a maximum of $14,905 a month for costs and fees.

Molina, however, protested and urged that the contract be put up for bids to ensure fairness and to get the most money for the county. The vote was delayed until next week while county staffers rewrite the contract to limit costs if the garage continues to be so lightly used.