Disney Hall’s Date With the Public Is Postponed to 2002

Downtown’s Walt Disney Concert Hall, new home for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, will most likely open its doors in October 2002, rather than fall 2001 as earlier projected, according to the project’s new construction chief.

Jack Burnell, an architect and real estate developer who assumed construction oversight in mid-February, said Wednesday that the previous optimistic guess that the hall could open in 2001 was quashed by a six-month delay starting the next phases of design work on the structure.

The undulating design by Frank O. Gehry--selected more than 10 years ago when the project was launched by a $50-million gift from Walt Disney’s widow, the late Lillian B. Disney--now requires changes to accommodate new building codes put in place after the 1994 Northridge quake, as well as office space for Philharmonic administrators and a 200-seat theater for use by CalArts.

“If they had started up with this thing immediately last fall when a new [Disney Hall oversight] board got constituted, there was a chance to get it done, but having delayed getting started to February and March of this year, that killed it,” said Burnell, most recently a principal with the Chicago-based architecture firm Perkins & Will. “The Philharmonic needs two, ideally three, years to plan its season and book guest artists. We didn’t want to be misleading.”

Burnell said that hall construction should begin in the first quarter of 1999, and that by summer or early fall of that year “stuff will start sprouting out of the garage, structural frames and enclosures and so on; there will be lots of activity at the site.”

Burnell also said the original plan to cover the all-curves exterior with white limestone has been scrapped in favor of a cladding of stainless steel. “Instead of looking like wet cardboard, now it will look like the crash of a 747,” he joked.

Burnell said that creating stone surfaces with the “compound curvature” required by Gehry’s design added to the cost of the building in two ways: First, there are only a few people in the world able to cut the stone into such curves, allowing little room for competitive bidding among contractors. In addition, the heavy stone requires expensive and difficult earthquake retrofitting not required by the lighter-weight metal.

Also, Burnell added, the bright metal should provide more contrast to downtown’s many already-existing white concrete structures. “It will sparkle in the daytime, and be reflective of the lights of the city at night,” he said. “It will have more impact as a sculptural object.” Gehry, who is traveling this week, was not available for comment.

Burnell insisted that the metal cladding will not make Disney Hall “the son of Bilbao”--referring to Gehry’s critically acclaimed Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, which is covered in titanium. “The museum used smaller panels, creating much more texture,” Burnell said. “Titanium is a much darker color than stainless steel--and at night, it turns black. We want this building to sparkle at night.

“This ought to be a very active, entertaining building, not a concert hall for snobs. This is L.A., the entertainment capital. It ought to be fun.”

Despite the rescheduling, Disney Hall officials say the estimated $255-million cost of the hall has held steady (additional funds needed for the CalArts space and the Philharmonic’s administration offices are being raised separately). A collection of recent donations under $1 million have brought the project within $15 million of the funds needed to build the hall.