Arts Center Halfway to Fund-Raising Goal

The Orange County Performing Arts Center has raised nearly half the $200 million needed for an expansion and remains on schedule in its drive to open a new symphony hall by October 2005.

Officials announced Wednesday that the campaign has reached $94.2 million. During the upbeat news conference in the center’s lobby, they showed off dozens of newly completed architectural models and drawings, tangible signs of progress that center officials hope will spur renewed enthusiasm for what would be the largest arts project in county history.

However, Roger T. Kirwan, the center’s chairman, acknowledged that the campaign is moving through uncharted terrain after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. “We don’t deny it’s different,” he said. “Anybody who does not expect to hit a speed bump [in a large capital campaign] is not dealing in reality. We didn’t expect one this big.”

Other Orange County nonprofit groups trying to raise large sums said they are falling short of their targets because of the double whammy of an economic downturn and the outbreak of a war against terrorism.

So far, though, Kirwan said, there are no signs that the center’s campaign might lag. He said donors who had long been considering large gifts have come through with pledges, giving the campaign “a spike in the past few weeks.”

The center, which does not seek or receive government funding, aims to add a 2,000-seat concert hall and a 500-seat all-purpose theater to the existing 3,000-seat Segerstrom Hall and its 300-seat adjunct stage. Since the campaign began in July 1999, officials have appealed to community pride, offering a chance to create something for posterity, and to ease the pressure on the overbooked existing venue as well as build a hall better tailored to symphonic music.

Arts leaders Wednesday added another reason: supporting the arts as a source of comfort and enlightenment in times of trouble, and as an affirmation of the values of a free culture.

Carl St.Clair, conductor of the Pacific Symphony--which would benefit greatly from the new concert hall--spoke of the “purifying, enlightening, rejuvenating effect on our lives” that musical performances have brought since Sept. 11.

Shopping center mogul and arts patron Henry T. Segerstrom boosted the campaign 14 months ago with a $40-million naming gift for the Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall.

Jerry E. Mandel, the center’s president, said after the news conference that if fund-raising can continue on a $30-million-a-year pace for the next 3 1/2 years, the expansion will be built on schedule. The timetable now calls for construction to begin after fund-raising has hit $125 million to $150 million--a mark Kirwan said the center hopes to reach by the end of 2002. Only large-scale donors will be courted until $150 million is raised; then the center plans to ask the public for contributions of all sizes.

Recent Southern California history suggests that large construction projects in the arts are subject to shortfalls and delays: When the fund-raising drive began in 1980 for the existing Orange County Performing Arts Center, it was planned as a complex of two halls of 3,200 and 1,500 seats. Escalating costs and the recession of the early 1980s resulted in a smaller project that opened in 1986, two years late.

In Los Angeles, construction of the Disney Hall was shut down for years as costs escalated and money ran out. After an initial groundbreaking in 1992, the adventurous building designed by Frank O. Gehry is back on track and expected to open in 2004.

To safeguard against construction overruns on the Orange County project, Kirwan said, the center is “very close” to contracting with Fluor Daniel, a construction company, to build the expansion at a fixed price.

To help broaden its fund-raising reach, the center has recruited a Campaign Leadership Committee of 26 prominent Orange County residents. The committee includes some not previously associated with the center: Peter V. Ueberroth, organizer of the 1984 L.A. Olympics, and Arnold O. Beckman, centenarian scientist and philanthropist.

Others trying to raise money in Orange County are nervous that patrons of the arts, education and human services could be curtailing their giving.

At Orange County’s United Way, Susan Caumiant, director of marketing, said that current campaigns to persuade workers to share a percentage of their paychecks are “coming in much lower than we had hoped for. There are some concerns” that the charity’s goal of $27 million for 2001-02 may be in jeopardy.