$20 Million Pledged for Disney Hall

New gifts totaling $20 million for downtown’s Walt Disney Concert Hall project are expected to be announced today. Added to a previous matching gift of $5 million, the latest donations meet the challenge of a $25-million matching grant from the Walt Disney Co. announced last December.

Declining to name the new donors in advance of today’s announcement, Disney Hall fund-raising chairman Eli Broad said Tuesday that the donation package includes “three gifts of $5 million or more” and described two of the gifts as “major gifts.”

The gifts reduce the project’s construction funding gap to just under $24 million, bringing amounts raised to about 88% of the $255-million cost of the Frank O. Gehry-designed home for the Los Angeles Philharmonic at downtown’s Music Center. It is expected to open in 2001.

The Walt Disney Concert Hall project was instigated by a 1987 donation of $50 million by Walt’s widow, Lillian B. Disney, who died last December at age 98. Disney family gifts, including additional donations and gifts, now total $100 million. The challenge grant from the Disney Co. was the single largest gift following the original family donation.

Disney Hall officials confirmed Tuesday that the funds matching the Disney Co. challenge include a previously disclosed $5 million personal donation from Disney Co. board Chairman Roy E. Disney--nephew of Walt Disney--and Roy’s wife, Patty. That gift is earmarked for an endowment for a 200-seat performance space on the concert hall site for the California Institute of the Arts, an accredited arts college based in Valencia that Walt Disney founded in the early 1960s.

Today’s announcement, slated to take place at the center’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, is expected to be attended by Mayor Richard J. Riordan, County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, Music Center Chairwoman Andrea Van de Kamp and Gehry, among others.

Disney Hall officials’ latest fund-raising figures vary somewhat from previously reported accounts. In December, following the Walt Disney Co. challenge grant, Disney Hall officials said fund-raising totals had reached $168.38 million--80% of the approximately $200 million needed to complete the hall (an additional $55 million already had been spent on the design process). However, a Disney Hall spokesman said Tuesday that of that $168.38 million, only $156.58 million is available for actual hall construction costs. The rest is earmarked for various endowments, including the donation from Roy E. and Patty Disney.

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The $20 million in new funds to be announced today all is designated for building costs, raising the total funds available for construction to $176.58 million.

Fund-raisers are hoping to raise $100 million above building costs to create an endowment to maintain Disney Hall and help pay for its programming.

The designation of funds may be further complicated in the future because there are now three structures planned for the Disney Hall complex: the concert hall itself, the performance facility for CalArts and an administration building for the Philharmonic. Officials said they will reveal more specifics about the funding and design of these structures today.

Sources confirm that architect Gehry’s firm has recently begun the drawings for the orchestra hall.