New Estimate of Performing Arts Plan Expansive

Experts assessing the Orange County Performing Arts Center’s ambitious expansion plans have some expensive news: It will cost twice as much as expected--$200 million or more.

The first realistic price tag for the project was presented this week to center officials, who conceded Wednesday that the original estimate of $100 million, made by the center’s staff, amounted to “amateurs just throwing out numbers,” said Roger T. Kirwin, chairman elect of the center’s board of directors.

The cost estimate pushes the proposed two-theater addition into the top ranks of major arts and entertainment facilities recently built or under construction, including Los Angeles’ Disney Hall and Seattle’s Benaroya Hall.

Theater consultant and acoustician Russell Johnson and project architect Cesar Pelli revealed the new estimate to about 30 of the center’s board members on Tuesday, but few expressed surprise.

“There has to be a degree of sticker shock when it goes from 100 to 200, but nobody fell off their chair,” said one board member.

“Did I think it was a lot of money? Yes. Was I surprised? No,” said Tom Tucker, chairman of the board’s development committee.

With refinements to the plans, including the addition of two rehearsal halls, the actual size of the project has grown too--from 184,000 square feet to about 300,000 square feet, about 63%.

“I don’t think there was anybody who was upset,” Tucker said. “I think there were people not from my industry [real estate] that were a little taken aback.”

The next step will be a feasibility study to determine whether the money can be raised. “We think it can,” center President Jerry E. Mandel said.

The expansion calls for a 2,000-seat concert hall and a 500-seat multipurpose theater, plus additional rehearsal halls, kitchen and dining areas and some additional backstage facilities.

All are scheduled to open in fall 2004 on the now-vacant 7.5-acre parcel south of the center and behind South Coast Repertory Theatre in Costa Mesa. Not included in this project, but being explored separately, is adding a third SCR theater to the complex.

“We did not use anything from the previous study,” said Johnson in an interview Wednesday. “That was what we might call a quickie. This [study] is for real.”

“Sticker shock” is not that unusual in such concert hall projects, he said. “Sometimes they don’t get down to business until the fourth time around.”

The 2,380-seat Walt Disney Concert Hall, which had been on the drawing boards for years and has grown in size and cost over that time, is now projected to cost $258.9 million when it is completed as part of the Los Angeles Music Center complex in downtown Los Angeles.

And Seattle recently christened its $118.1-million Benaroya Hall, the first new hall built specifically for symphonic performances in the country in a decade.

Whether Orange County can raise the $200-million plus remains an open question.

When the center board raised more than $76 million for the 3,000-seat Segerstrom Hall, which opened in 1986, it was “by far the most money ever raised by a cultural organization in the county to date,” said Bonnie Brittain Hall, executive director of Arts Orange County, a nonprofit countywide arts council.

“This project would certainly be another incredibly sight-raising effort,” she said.

“The county is a much more complex place than it was at the time of the last campaign,” Hall said. “Orange County is more mature; there are more demands on resources these days. And yes, there is more wealth and sophistication.

“So it’s really difficult to know how the community might respond this time out.”

A consulting firm in Los Angeles has been hired to conduct a fund-raising feasibility study, as it did for the original Performing Arts Center. Mandel said the report should be completed in three to five months.

In the meantime, Kirwin, who takes over as board chairman on July 1, said the center is about 30 days away from announcing a significant donation for the expansion project. So far the planning is being financed by $4 million from a donor the center has declined to identify.

Kirwin said he doesn’t believe a $200-million fund-raising drive would dry up money for the smaller arts organizations, some of which use the center.

“We’re working very closely with them as partners. We’re not going to hurt anyone,” Kirwin said.

“We don’t expect our current supporters would forsake us and give to the building instead,” said Dean Corey, executive director of the Philharmonic Society of Orange County. “They would do both.”

“Generally we raise each year between $2 million and $2.5 million for supporting our operations,” said Martin Hubbard, executive director of Opera Pacific. “That source of funding I don’t think should be impacted by a major capital campaign like the center’s.”

But others, speaking off the record, said they were apprehensive about losing donations, even when the project was estimated at $100 million.

“It’s a reasonable figure in terms of what you want to build,” said one. Hiring an architect of Pelli’s international stature, then scrimping on construction costs wouldn’t make sense, he said.

“I think it’s a reasonable figure for a world-class hall,” said Dean Corey, executive director of the Philharmonic Society of Orange County. “You could certainly go cheaper, but I imagine they would try to do something even better than Segerstrom Hall.”

“This is what it costs,” Tucker said. “We either pay this or it’s not a project we are ready to do at this time.” Moving symphony concerts to the new 2,000-seat theater will free dates for grand opera at Segerstrom Hall, for which that space is more suited, said Mitchell Krieger, Opera Pacific’s production chief.

“We are going to be ready for that. We think it will be a very exciting time.”

Staff writer Ann Conway contributed to this report.