Concert Hall Plan ‘Feasible’

It is time to start the meter ticking on the Orange County Performing Arts Center’s five-year plan to build a new 2,000-seat concert hall, the center’s president, Jerry E. Mandel, said Tuesday.

Center officials were buoyed by results of a study they received last weekend. The project, estimated to cost $200 million, is, in a word, feasible, according to the study by Gary Phillips and Associates, a Los Angeles consultant that helps plan fund-raising campaigns for nonprofit organizations.

Phillips, in a news release, said his study of potential community backing for the concert hall, “reflects the strongest sense of . . . leadership commitment and support for a major expansion program that we have experienced” in more than 130 such feasibility studies over the last 29 years. Like the existing 3,000-seat center, which opened in 1986, the addition is to be built with private funds. Mandel said the fund-raising phase should take two to 2 1/2 years.

Center Chairman Roger T. Kirwan termed the report “obviously reassuring,” in a prepared statement.

“The consensus of this report is essentially what we suspected: This project is--while not without some very significant challenges--something that this community truly supports and is willing to help make a reality.”

The study itself is confidential, Center spokesman Todd Bentjen said. He said the community’s ability to raise the money was gauged through written questionnaires or face-to-face interviews with about 60 people who are in a position to make or influence major donations.

Phillips presented the report over the weekend during the center board’s annual retreat at the Four Seasons hotelin San Diego.

A feasibility study, Mandel said, “reassures everybody, gives you a blueprint for the way to go, and gets everybody fired up. This really starts everything.”

Cesar Pelli, the project’s architect, will start detailed work on the hall’s design, Mandel said, and contacts with arts patrons in a position to make large gifts will become “more systematic” as Kirwan and ex-center chairman Mark Chapin Johnson, who will spearhead the fund-raising effort, finish appointing a committee to raise the money.

Some center board members had “sticker shock” in June when Pelli and acoustician Russell Johnson estimated the cost at $200 million. Mandel said center officials hope to find ways to keep costs down without compromising the quality of the hall.

“More than likely there will be some reduction, though it’s too early [to say how much],” he said. Cost-savers might include reducing the building’s projected size of 300,000 square feet, or settling for less elaborate finishes and interiors. The goal, Mandel said, is a building “comparable to our current hall.”

“It doesn’t need to be a lot better, except acoustically.”

Mandel said that while the center has not yet reeled in a cornerstone donor (who likely would receive the right to name the new hall for a donation expected to be about $50 million), the prospects remain strong.

“We’re meeting with a couple of large donors at the naming level. They have not said no. Usually it takes a year to 18 months [to secure such a large donation]. This has been under a year.”

John E. Forsyte, the Pacific Symphony’s executive director, said he was impressed that the study showed broad community support for the expansion, which would enable the Santa Ana-based orchestra to give more concerts and allow it to rehearse regularly in the same hall in which it performs.

“The Pacific Symphony stands to gain tremendously by this project,” Forsyte said, “and we’re going to do everything we can to help raise the money and make the case for this concert hall.”