H.B. Art Center to Ask City for $69,000 Loan

The Huntington Beach Art Center, which receives $81,000 annually from the city, will ask the City Council for a $69,000 increase for 1996-97, in the form of a loan to be repaid over eight years.

The increase is actually part of a proposed five-year plan to reduce city funding of the center by implementing various revenue-raising projects, with the goal of being debt-free and able to create an endowment by 2001.

A preliminary 1996-97 budget for the center--to be presented to the City Council on Monday--was drawn up recently by a subcommittee of the Huntington Beach Art Center Foundation, the institution’s private fund-raising group, and representatives from the city.

The art center’s overall $400,000 budget for next year remains unchanged. But because the foundation fell about $65,000 short of its $220,000 goal this year, its contribution under the proposed plan would be reduced to $150,000. The rest of the budget would be met with $150,000 from the city and $100,000 in earned income from ticket sales, events and other sources.

The $400,000 budget is necessary to retain the center’s identity as a cultural institution, says director Naida Osline.

“If we can’t keep the art center going at this level, we have to change what the art center does,” Osline said, “and we’re hoping not to have to do that.”

The art center, which opened in March 1995, mounts a regular program of exhibitions and performances by living artists working in many media and addressing a wide range of issues.

Themes of past art shows have ranged from skateboard imagery by local graphic artists to work involving unusual interpretations of scientific lore. Notables who have appeared at the center include performance artists Rachel Rosenthal and John Fleck, dancer Mehmet Sander and novelist and cultural critic Lynne Tillman.

Last summer, the city made a verbal agreement to fund the center for a minimum of five years at a minimum level of $81,000, the current city budget allocation.

But the lack of a long-term written agreement between the center and the city accounts for the foundation’s fund-raising problems this year, according to Michael Mudd, the city’s cultural services manager.

*

Foundation members “were feeling uncomfortable approaching [potential donors] because there wasn’t stability in the organization,” he said Monday.

With a five-year or 10-year commitment from the city, assuring the future of the center as a municipal project, the foundation could target corporate as well as private donors, Mudd added.

Currently, the foundation banks heavily on its annual equestrian fund-raiser, which nets between $75,000 and $120,000.

Foundation member Gerald Chapman said Monday that talk about eliminating the city’s Community Services Department, of which the center is a part, had “made people reluctant to give.” But with a written agreement, he said, “we should be able to [raise $150,000]--and hopefully a whole lot more--without a lot of problems.”

Among the additional funding plans being discussed as a potential city project is the installation of meters in the center’s parking lot and nearby portions of Main Street next year, with revenues going to the center.

Mudd says that, beginning in 1997-98, the center could realize $45,000 to $65,000 annually from meter fees. (Members of both the center and the library would receive parking validations.)