Symphony Hall Building Fund Hits Halfway Mark

Inching forward against an inclement economy, leaders of the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Tuesday announced that its $200-million fund-raising campaign to build a new symphony hall has reached the halfway mark, thanks to $3.5 million in new corporate donations.

The gifts--$1.5 from Fluor Corp. in Aliso Viejo and $1 million each from the Times Mirror Foundation, headquartered in Los Angeles, and Costa Mesa’s ICN Pharmaceuticals--were the first new ones announced since last October.

The center also announced that the restaurant in the new hall, which will go up across the street from the existing center, will be named Ralph’s Cafe Rouge in honor of a $5-million gift from the Ralph and Eleanor Leatherby Foundation that had been pledged last fall but not made public. Ralph W. Leatherby, an insurance executive, was also a big band buff whose imagination was captured as a teen by swing music broadcasts from a New York City ballroom called Cafe Rouge.

Fund-raising will go forward under a new chairman, expected to be Paul F. Folino, a high-tech executive who would take the Costa Mesa center’s top post after helping to lead a successful $40-million fund-raising campaign as president of the neighboring theater company, South Coast Repertory.

Folino, chief executive of the Costa Mesa-based Emulex Corp., would arrive as a white knight of sorts, after turmoil erupted in the spring because of a lawsuit among members of the center’s board.

The suit, over a business investment gone bad, had nothing to do with the center, but it led to the resignation of two donors on the board, Broadcom Corp. partners Henry T. Nicholas III and Henry Samueli, who said they could no longer serve with four board members who were part of the suit against them.

One of the plaintiffs, Thomas T. Tierney, had been in line for the center’s chairmanship; in April he stepped aside in favor of Folino because of the suit. Folino was expected to be formally elected chairman at a Tuesday evening meeting of the center’s board.

The lawsuit did not hurt the fund-raising campaign, outgoing chairman Roger T. Kirwan said Tuesday. The economy has been another matter.

“Most everybody on our list had their financial lives disrupted if not seriously hurt” by market downturns, Kirwan said. “Those who have been very generous in the past have said, ‘I’d like to do more, but this is the most I’m comfortable committing to.’ ”

Kirwan and Henry T. Segerstrom, the Costa Mesa shopping center mogul who has been the center’s biggest donor, will chair the fund-raising campaign, taking over from another former center chairman, Mark Chapin Johnson.

The 2,000-seat concert hall, scheduled to open in September 2005, would give the center a space tailored for classical music and free more dates for opera, Broadway musicals and pop concerts at the 3,000-seat Segerstrom Hall, which center officials consider booked to the gills. With $100 million in the kitty, the center should be able to start building in January while still working to get the rest of the needed donations, said center President Jerry E. Mandel.

“It’s been tough, much tougher than I thought it was going to be,” Mandel said. “But we’re still getting gifts, and the interest is out there.”

The center essentially broke even on its day-to-day operations for 2001-02, according to unaudited figures released for the fiscal year that ended June 30. Like all major nonprofit performing arts organizations, the center does not expect to cover its costs at the box office and relies on donations to bridge the gap between earnings and expenses.

Gifts to the operating and endowment funds totaled $7.28 million, just enough to make up that difference.

The center’s earnings dropped from $23.5 million in 2000-01 to $19.2 million, which officials attributed to a 2 1/2-month closure for renovation. Paid attendance was off 16.8%, from 497,500 in 2000-01 to 439,365. Expenses also fell, from $30.4 million to $26.4 million. In the face of a collapsing stock market, the endowment tumbled 8.8%, from $22.8 million to $20.8 million.