$5-million gift for OCPAC hall

The Orange County Performing Arts Center, two months from the opening of its new Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, has received a $5-million gift for the campaign to fund the hall from the family foundation of longtime board member William Lyon and his wife, Willa Dean Lyon.

The campaign has raised $138 million of its $200-million goal, set in 1999, center officials said Wednesday.

Lyon, 83, is a home builder and retired Air Force general who has been on the board since the center opened in 1986. That year, he gave $1 million to the $73-million campaign for the original Segerstrom Hall.

Before the new Lyon gift, only $18 million had been raised in the last three years. Proceeds from a $180-million bond issue, which is in addition to the fundraising campaign, are being used to finish the hall in time for its Sept. 15 debut. Barring an outpouring of eleventh-hour largess before the opening, center officials anticipate having to keep raising the money needed to eventually retire the construction debt.

*

Mike Boehm