New movement cited in Orange County hall plans

While breaking ground on a new $200-million concert hall with orchestral fanfares, dancing bulldozers and fireworks, leaders of the Orange County Performing Arts Center said Thursday that a spark has returned to fund-raising efforts long stalled at the halfway mark.

But precisely how big a spark, and the identities of the new donors who are stoking it, they would not specify -- other than to say the campaign has moved “several million dollars” beyond $100 million.

There had been little evidence of progress since October 2001 -- the only glimmer coming last July with the announcement that $3.5 million in corporate donations had brought the campaign halfway to its goal.

That’s changing, the center’s chairman, Paul F. Folino, said before a late-afternoon groundbreaking ceremony that began with the Pacific Symphony playing Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” and Dmitri Shostakovich’s “Festival Overture” in the existing 3,000-seat Segerstrom Hall, then moved across the street to the vacant lot on which the new 2,000-seat Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall is scheduled to open in fall 2006.

“We feel good about what’s happened over the last 45 or 60 days,” Folino said. “I think everybody is feeling confident the ball is starting to roll again.”

Roger T. Kirwan, the capital campaign’s chairman, said the mere fact that construction is beginning has helped cement new pledges.

“It’s an awareness that this thing is actually going to happen. People were cautious, but now they see we’re breaking ground and they want to be a part of it.”

Kirwan said center officials decided not to announce where the campaign stands because “we want to focus today on the groundbreaking, not the specific total raised.” Folino said the campaign will issue updates when it hits milestones such as $110 million, $125 million and $150 million. The Orange County center accepts no government money, so the expansion depends solely on private donations.

Center President Jerry E. Mandel said that beyond those who already have given, the campaign has identified about 200 potential donors in Orange County capable of giving $100,000 or more. Prospects are being ushered almost daily into the “campaign room” set up on the 13th floor of an office tower overlooking the existing center and the expansion site. From there they can see the outline of the unbuilt concert hall, chalked in the dirt, while eating catered food, watching a video presentation and perusing artists’ renderings and architects’ mock-ups of what is to be built.

“One picture’s worth a thousand words,” Kirwan said. “And no, we haven’t had anybody say they’re not going to come to the room because it’s on the 13th floor.”

Some 2,300 people were expected to attend the groundbreaking ceremony. In the outdoor portion, Carl St.Clair, music director of the Pacific Symphony, was set to conduct three bulldozers, handled by tuxedoed drivers, in a “ballet” of unison lifts, pirouettes and a ceremonial digging up and pouring out of dirt, all set to the strains of “Velvet and Silk” by Viennese composer Carl Michael Ziehrer. The real construction won’t begin for two to three months, center officials said, because time is needed to obtain permits, order materials and make other preparations.

Mandel vowed that work will not bog down, as it did on the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. There, cost increases and fund-raising problems brought a halt from 1995 to 1999 after work had begun in 1992. Cesar Pelli’s curving, glassed-in design for Costa Mesa is straightforward and utilitarian compared with Frank O. Gehry’s undulating $274-million hall, which figures to become a symbolic landmark for L.A. when it opens next fall.

The Orange County expansion, Mandel said, is “a major, beautiful building, but it’s a concert hall, it’s not a monument, and it’s going to come in at $200 million.”

Aliso Viejo-based Fluor Corp., project manager for the Costa Mesa hall, has guaranteed the price, which also includes a 540-person-capacity multipurpose hall dubbed the Samueli Theater.

Costa Mesa shopping center magnate Henry T. Segerstrom pledged $40 million in August 2000; in January 2001, Broadcom Corp. co-founder Henry Samueli and his family announced a $10-million gift.