$15-Million Gift for Disney Hall Expected

A gift from Ralphs/Food 4 Less Foundation and one of the food chain’s executives will sustain the life of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, sources close to the project said Wednesday.

Concert hall project officials are expected to announce today a $15-million gift that will allow them to beat by more than two months a June 30 deadline for $52.3 million in fund-raising, imposed by Los Angeles County, owner of the land on which the hall will be built.

Sources say the most recent gift comes partly from the foundation and partly from Ron Burkle, managing partner of Yucaipa Cos., parent company of Ralphs Grocery Co. and Food 4 Less Inc. Burkle is also a member of the Music Center’s board of governors.

With this donation, Disney Hall officials will have raised the $52.3 million since December, including a $10-million gift from the Atlantic Richfield Co. Foundation announced in mid-March and other major gifts. The amount was required by Los Angeles County to avoid termination of the project, which the county put on hold in 1995 after construction delays and spiraling cost estimates. Before the shutdown, hall officials had in hand $115 million, including approximately $103 million in Disney family gifts and accrued interest. The current total in hand is $167.3 million.

The Frank O. Gehry-designed concert hall is to be built at 1st Street and Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, and is the planned home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the fourth venue of the Los Angeles Music Center. The hall will sit atop a $100-million underground parking structure, which has been built at county expense and in operation for more than a year.

In 1995, the projected cost of the hall was $265 million, and the county continues to base fund-raising deadlines on that figure, although at least one project official is now predicting lower costs. With approximately $100 million left to raise, according to county estimates, the next fund-raising goals are to bring in $89 million by December 1997 and $142 million by December 1998.

County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said Wednesday that the announcement of the latest gift is “great news for Disney Hall, and it’s great news for the county. It’s a tremendous confidence-builder that this project is serious once again. The project has been taken off the resuscitator and is in very good condition.”

Eli Broad, unofficial volunteer chairman of the concert hall fund-raising effort, said Wednesday that he is optimistic that hall officials will meet a self-imposed deadline of $100 million by June 30.

Broad, chairman and chief executive of SunAmerica Inc., added that meeting the first deadline will allow officials to begin getting architectural drawings finalized and launch a search for a project manager.

The gift from Ralphs/Food 4 Less Foundation and Burkle will provide approximately $2 million annually for seven years. The long-term arrangement is similar to that of both the gift from the Arco Foundation, which will give $10 million over five years, and a gift from the Times Mirror Foundation (affiliated with Times Mirror Co., the parent company of The Times), which announced in December that it will distribute its $5-million contribution over five years.

The $265-million figure for the hall was determined by Hines Interests, a Houston-based management company brought in when cost estimates for the project began to escalate.

The Hines calculation includes “hard costs” of $142 million with additional “soft costs” and contingencies for a total of $217 million. In a recent interview, Hines Senior Vice President Colin Shepherd said other risk-related contingency costs, including potential increases caused by construction delays, were added at the request of the Music Center, raising the estimate to $265 million.

Broad said he believes that is substantially above the amount that will be needed to build the hall, and he differs strongly with Hines’ 1995 estimates, which he says are outdated. Broad says the total could be closer to $170 million.

Among the cost-cutting measures under consideration is a proposal to change the material covering the hall’s exterior from limestone to metal, which could save $5 million.

Architect Gehry agreed with Broad that the cost of building the hall could be much less than Hines’ estimate, based on his knowledge of recent project costs, including the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, which is slated to open this summer. However, Gehry expressed concern about changing the exterior materials, saying that limestone was an integral part of his original design and that all involved in the Disney project since its inception have preferred it. He also pointed out that the amount saved would not substantially change the overall cost.

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The Building Fund

Disney Hall officials have beaten Los Angeles County’s fund-raising deadline by more than two months.

Estimated Cost: $265 million*

Total in Hand: $167.3 million

Latest Installments: $52.3 million

Previously Raised: $115 million

* Project officials now say this estimate may be substantially inflated