Family Confirms Donation of Land for Arts Center

The Segerstrom family on Tuesday formally announced it will donate $16 million worth of land for an expanded cultural complex in Costa Mesa to be called the Segerstrom Center for the Arts.

The family has agreed in principle to contribute roughly 6 acres of former farmland for a complex that will complement the Orange County Performing Arts Center, said Henry T. Segerstrom. Prospects for the gift were announced by center officials in February but the plan had not--until Tuesday--been confirmed by the donors.

“Our family is particularly pleased and proud that this gift of our resources can be made . . . as we are celebrating our 100th year in Orange County,” Segerstrom said.

Center officials also formally announced that renowned Argentine architect Cesar Pelli has been hired to design the project’s first phase. Pelli created a model shown last month to officials from leading local arts organizations.

The first phase will encompass a concert hall of 1,800 to 2,000 seats and a 500-seat multipurpose auditorium to be built south of the center on what is now a parking lot and a grassy expanse, officials said.

The Segerstrom family, whose forebears arrived in Orange County in 1898 and started their first farm in Orange, also donated the land on which the current center was built in 1986. The family firm, C.J. Segerstrom & Sons, built South Coast Plaza in 1966.

Center Chairman Mark Chapin Johnson said the family would deed roughly 2 acres of the needed land to the center once officials have raised half the money needed to build the two halls. Center officials said the facilities will be built only with private funds.

Johnson, who has estimated that a concert hall alone would cost $100 million or more, on Tuesday said that no firm estimate for the project’s initial phase would be made before more feasibility studies and Pelli’s designs are done.

The announcement of a capital campaign will follow a six- to eight-month period during which major donors will be approached, center officials said. Groundbreaking would come in about two years, and construction of the two halls is expected to take about three years.

Pelli, 72, is based in Connecticut and is known for conservatively designed office buildings and for several arts complexes around the country. He was chosen for the new concert hall largely because of the acoustical excellence of the concert halls he has designed, Johnson said.

Center officials also announced that Russell Johnson of New York has been hired as the acoustician for the concert hall. It would be used primarily by the Santa Ana-based Pacific Symphony, but also by some touring orchestras brought in by the Philharmonic Society of Orange County and by the center itself.

Officials did not give groundbreaking dates or cost estimates for other major elements of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts. These would include an outdoor plaza roughly the size of a football field, a visual arts center abutting the new concert hall and an expansion of South Coast Repertory.

South Coast Repertory, as well as any occupant of the proposed visual arts component, would pay its own construction costs, said center officials, who hope to avoid competition for donations by staggering the phases of the expansion.

A theater spokesman said the theater company’s expansion plans are not firm.

Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff contributed to this report.

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Plans for a Arts New Complex

Announced plans for expanding the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa include an 1,800-seat concert hall and a 500-seat multipurpose hall. A 1,200-seat multipurpose hall is expected in the future. Town Center Drive will be closed to make way for a pedestrian plaza that will link the existing center with the expansion.