Funding shortfall hits Watts Towers

Because of belt-tightening in Los Angeles’ municipal arts agency, visiting hours will be cut at the Watts Towers, one of the city’s most distinctive landmarks.

Money is running out for tour guides who lead some 1,200 to 1,500 visitors a month through the site, said Leslie Thomas, assistant general manager of the city’s Cultural Affairs Department. The unique, 99.5-foot-high fantasia of spires and sculptures was created single-handedly from 1921 to 1954 by Simon Rodia, an unschooled Italian immigrant. Thomas said Tuesday that as-yet-undetermined reductions in the tour schedule will take effect after May 29, when this fiscal year’s allotment for guides will run out.

Thomas said the problem will worsen after July 1, when a new budget year kicks in and, with it, an 18.6% funding reduction for the Cultural Affairs Department. He said the cuts also may slow the pace of conservation work on the vulnerable towers, where moisture and heat continually cause cement to crack and bits of ornamentation to fall out. Officials also are mulling possible funding cuts for two annual events at the site, the Watts Towers Jazz Festival and the Day of the Drum Festival.

Visitors pay $3 to $5 to tour the Watts Towers; that money, Thomas said, could cover a substantial chunk of the tour guides’ salary, but it goes to the city’s general fund rather than being earmarked for towers-related expenses. He said the city may have to try to develop a corps of volunteer docents to show viewers the towers -- a system that has been in place at another city-run landmark, the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Hollyhock House in Hollywood’s Barnsdall Park.

Jeanne Smith Morgan, who chairs a private advocacy group, the Committee for Simon Rodia’s Towers in Watts, complained that reducing tours would undermine Mayor James K. Hahn’s goal of exploiting L.A.’s cultural offerings as tourist attractions.

“The tours bring in revenue, which is what the mayor’s been asking them to do,” she said.

Some additional help for the constantly eroding towers is on the way, said Sean Woods, a planner for the California Parks Department who is liaison between the state, which owns the landmark, and the city, which has a 50-year contract to maintain it.

Woods said the state expects to award a $225,000 contract next week for a fresh set of experts who will examine the upper reaches of the towers and make recommendations on possible new technical approaches to preserving them.

“We had applications from all over the place,” Woods said. “It really is the Everest of the conservation field.”

The contract also will cover some hands-on repair work over the coming year and a half, Woods said, although the city remains contractually responsible for funding and carrying out its own share of the work.