Prospects Looking Up at Arts Center

The Orange County Performing Arts Center has begun to make headway toward an ambitious, $200-million expansion project, raising about $25 million from 15 of its own board members.

As for the existing operation, all the leading indicators were up during the just-finished fiscal year. The center hosted a record 329 performances, the 495,621 ticket buyers represented a 16% increase in paid attendance and the OCPAC balance sheet came in $700,000 ahead of its target, according to figures released Thursday during the center’s annual members’ meeting in Founders Hall.

The year yielded “the best financial results” in center history, Jerry E. Mandel, the center’s president and chief operating officer, told the gathering at the center.

There were only 24 days all year when Segerstrom Hall was not being used for a performance, a rehearsal or for setting up a show, he said. The Costa Mesa arts complex, which opened in 1986, staged 13 more shows than it did a year ago.

The attendance gains bolster the case for expansion, center chairman Roger T. Kirwan said in an interview before the meeting. Plans call for building a 2,000-seat concert hall and 500-seat multipurpose theater on a parking lot across the street from the existing building that houses the 3,000-seat Segerstrom Hall and the 300-seat Founders Hall.

“Anybody who questioned the support the arts had locally, those questions are put to bed when you see these results,” Kirwan said.

The expansion campaign’s first goal is to raise $50 million from the center’s board members and the boards of the five regional performing arts groups that make the center their home. Mark Chapin Johnson, the center’s point man in the fund-raising campaign, reported that a figure in “the mid-20 million range” has been committed thus far. Kirwan said he expects to surpass the $50-million milestone by summer’s end.

But not yet in hand, though crucial to the campaign’s success, are three huge “naming gifts” of $50 million for the large concert hall, $25 million for the multipurpose theater and $20 million for a plaza, all targeted to open in 2004.

Before the meeting Kirwan said the courting of those prospective mega-donors continues. “They haven’t committed, but we have some people who are very, very interested,” he said. Sealing such large donations often requires painstaking negotiations over exactly how the money will be spent, he said.

“I don’t think the ego drive to have your name on something has you write that big a check,” Kirwan said. “It’s got to be a love of the arts and/or a love of the community.”

Kirwan said the center has spent about $1 million so far on architects’ fees and other preliminary costs--all of it money donated specifically for the expansion.

The highlight of the season was a blockbuster run of performances by the Bolshoi Ballet. The famed Russian company played to seven packed houses in its recent center debut and boosted the center’s ticket income $200,000 above budgeted projections.

Fund-raising also exceeded the target figure by about $200,000, and management efficiencies kept expenditures $100,000 below expectations, according to the unaudited figures presented Thursday.

Mandel acknowledged in an interview that luck played a part in the center’s strong fiscal performance. “Do we get another Bolshoi? Who knows,” he said, adding that he hopes next season’s biggest-name dance attraction, the Paris Opera Ballet, “will have the same effect.”

But he added that strong performances by the center’s fund-raising department and marketing team are institutional pluses that he expects to help the bottom line every year.

While the center’s operating expenses rose 6.7% to $28.5 million, its income from ticket sales and rentals jumped 10.7% to $21.7 million. The box office take was $14.7 million for shows presented by the center, up 7.2% from a year ago. The average paid house was 72% full, a tick down from last year’s 73%.

The center itself presented 221 performances--6 fewer than the previous year. There were an additional 108 rental dates, including performances of the Pacific Symphony Orchestra, Opera Pacific, the Philharmonic Society of Orange County, the Pacific Chorale and William Hall Master Chorale.

As always--and as is the case with all nonprofit performing arts venues--the center had to close the gap between income and expenses with donations. The $7.6 million raised during the year was up $500,000 from a year ago and more than covered the $6.8-million operating deficit. Investment income was $2 million, up from last year’s $1.5 million.

Overall, the center was able to increase its endowment to $22.7 million, up 11% from the $20.4 million of a year ago.

The increased performance activity took place in Segerstrom Hall, where the number of shows jumped from 207 to 253. The show count at the intimate Founders Hall dropped from 109 a year ago to 76. Mandel said that was partly a matter of cabaret stars such as Linda Eder and Diana Krall graduating from multiple-night stands in the smaller room to headlining engagements in the big hall.

The good news brought a lighthearted mood to the 55-minute meeting, with extemporized quips the rule among the various speakers. More solemn was Kirwan’s posthumous presentation of the Chairman’s Cup, an annual award for outstanding volunteer service to the center, to Renee Segerstrom, who died June 7 at age 72.

“We will miss her grace and style, but we are fortunate that she has left us so many wonderful ways to remember her,” the chairman told the gathering in commemorating the work done over many years by the wife of developer Henry T. Segerstrom.

Segerstrom, the center’s leading benefactor over the years, did not attend the meeting, Kirwan said, “because he felt it would just be too emotional for him.”

The center also announced the election of three new board members to three-year terms.

* Bonnie G. Hill, senior vice president of communications and public affairs for the Los Angeles Times. She also is president and chief executive officer of the Times Mirror Foundation and is former dean of the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia.

* Rick E. Keller, president and managing director of the Keller Group, Investment Management Inc. The Irvine-based company manages more than $1 billion.

* Douglas H. Smith, a principal and director of Kinsmith Financial Corp., a family-owned investment company, and a director of the H. Russell Smith Foundation, a family-administered charity that has donated to the center and other Southern California cultural institutions.