Downtown awakes, so should its stage

The Spring Street neighborhood around the Los Angeles Theatre Center, in downtown L.A., looks surprisingly springy these days. The area, which remained a dead zone during most of LATC’s creative heyday from 1985 to 1991, is bouncing back as more people choose an urban loft life in downtown L.A.

It seems an ideal time to make the grand LATC lobby hum with theatergoers once again, just as it did when the original resident company was championing the early work of such artists as Tony Kushner, Jon Robin Baitz, August Wilson, Culture Clash and Reza Abdoh. But first the city government, which owns LATC and runs its bare-bones theater rental operation, has to figure out who should be in charge.

In 2003, the city, in an attempt to trim the budget of its Cultural Affairs Department, requested private proposals to run LATC. A city panel examined the bids, and the winner was a partnership between downtown developer Tom Gilmore -- whose residential projects have helped revive the neighborhood -- and the Will & Company troupe, which often produces at LATC. A proposal from Latino Theater Company, a sporadic producer at LATC, placed second.

For two years, the recommendation went nowhere, despite efforts by City Councilwoman Jan Perry to bring the two teams together. Last week, the City Council voted to kill the plan.

In voting down the proposal, many council members objected to the city’s offer to pay maintenance costs for the LATC building. But the recommendation bit the dust largely because supporters of the Latino Theater wouldn’t take no for an answer. They found an ally in the Latino Museum of History, Art and Culture, an institution that offered to kick in $4 million it had received from the city in a real estate settlement.

The Latino Theater also found allies among politicians, locally and in Sacramento. Joining forces with the Latino Museum, the theater company applied for a state grant last fall and tentatively won the program’s top prize of $4 million. With an anticipated $8 million, the Latino consortium is seeking a 20-year lease on LATC.

Intended for capital improvements, the state grant requires a matching amount from the community. The Latino groups hope that the lease from the city will serve as the match.

Supporters of Gilmore perceive the whiff of backroom deals designed to overturn the results of the public process that resulted in Gilmore’s winning bid.

Some even suggest an element of bias is at work. At last week’s City Council meeting, Mexican American actress Laura Leyva, who has performed with Will & Company, hurled charges of racism at Latino Theater supporters, not only in her testimony but as a heckler from the audience.

“I wouldn’t call it racism,” Gilmore said in an interview after the meeting. “But I would call it ethnic favoritism.”

If the Latino company had placed first in the initial bidding and Gilmore had returned with more money and tried to re-open the process -- “there would have been a nuclear explosion,” Gilmore said, because he is “the big white guy.” He is on “the wrong side of the ethnic equation.”

Not all of his troops are. When Will & Company supporters testified before a council committee, almost all identified themselves by their ethnic heritage or heritages -- and few were white. The ethnic talk got so heavy that council members began jokingly referring to their own ethnicities.

The other side also spoke about ethnicity. Latino Theater member Evelina Fernandez told the committee she was “troubled by the fact that because we’re Latino, we’re not seen as inclusive. But if we did just want to have a Latino company and museum, would there be anything wrong with it? Half of L.A. is Latino.” She added: “We’re going to open our arms to everybody.”

In its application for the state grant, the Latino consortium wrote that “there presently does not exist anywhere in the state a venue designed to showcase Latino artists and culture.” This is an exaggeration: L.A. officials helped the Ricardo Montalban Foundation buy the Doolittle Theatre in Hollywood, with the intent of creating a Latino performing arts center. But the re-named Montalban Theatre is largely inactive because of the costs of maintaining and upgrading the building.

Who can best pay the ongoing bills, as well as produce the art, is the crux of the LATC dispute.

Both the Latino Theater and the Latino Museum produce shows or exhibitions only occasionally. Neither has successfully managed a building for very long. Brady Westwater, president of the downtown neighborhood council, says the Latino company should produce at LATC but shouldn’t manage it. On Friday, the company announced it would hire giant real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle to run the property, paying for its services from the $1 million the company hopes to raise this year in a fundraising campaign.

Gilmore hasn’t managed an arts complex. However, he said Friday he was confident he could match or exceed the financial resources available to the opposition. If he had a 20-year lease, in contrast to the three-year lease offered by the previous request for proposals, he said, he too would move forward with capital improvements.

His partners at Will & Company already have helped manage LATC. They produce shows frequently for school groups and tours -- but rarely the adult-oriented shows that would seem necessary to sustain LATC over the long run.

The city appears ready to reopen the process and invite others to bid. The candidates should be willing and able to attract other theater companies to LATC. And they should demonstrate they can sustain the place for at least two decades, financially as well as creatively. LATC deserves to become a keeper.