Build a hall, and then go to court

So you wanna be an architectural star?

The pay can be pretty good, but you might wind up taking some lumps after the fact. Witness the $22.3-million fixed fee that the Orange County Performing Arts Center paid to Cesar A. Pelli and his firm for designing the new Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa -- and the lawsuit the center filed last week blaming Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, general contractor Fluor Corp. and assorted subcontractors for cost overruns “substantially exceeding $30 million” on a project that was budgeted at $200 million but came in around $240 million.

Pelli, a courtly Argentine immigrant, was responsible for paying acoustical and engineering consultants out of his fee, according to a contract filed in Orange County Superior Court; his firm received an additional $581,000 for supervising construction.

Pelli was handpicked by the center’s leading donor, Henry Segerstrom; the two have been friendly for about 30 years, and Pelli designed the 21-story Plaza Tower that is part of Segerstrom’s retail and office empire in Costa Mesa.

The Walt Disney Concert Hall construction saga also ended in court, with the hall’s parent corporation and architect Frank Gehry’s insurers agreeing last year to pay nearly $18 million to contractors in a dispute over responsibility for $43 million in cost increases.