Pacific Symphony, Anaheim Won’t Team Up on Building Concert Hall

ANAHEIM — The Pacific Symphony and the city of Anaheim have dropped the idea of teaming up to build a concert hall as a new home for the orchestra.

City and orchestra officials said it would have been too expensive and cited as a key factor in the decision a promise to the orchestra from the Orange County Performing Arts Center that a new concert hall will be added at the Costa Mesa complex.

“We think the economics just aren’t there,” Anaheim City Manager James D. Ruth said Tuesday. “Plus they’ve been offered a proposal where they are.

“If they relocated here,” Ruth said, “there would have to be a massive fund-raising effort and they would also lose a lot of their South County support.”

Orchestra president Janice Johnson confirmed that exploratory talks between Anaheim, the county’s second-largest city, and Southern California’s second-largest orchestra went no further than “talking numbers over a table.” Those discussions ended in April.

“It’s probably best for us, for the county, and for the center, to stay at the center,” Johnson said Tuesday. She added that an April 21 proposal from the center cemented the orchestra’s decision.

“They promised us that we would have a concert hall,” she said, “and that it would take from five to seven years, but probably seven.”

Center board chairman Mark Chapin Johnson (no relation to Janice Johnson) said Wednesday: “It certainly appears that the best and most appropriate venue is to build a concert hall. But we will do so for the benefit of the entire community and all the arts groups, and not exclusively for any one organization.”

A 1996 study for the center recommended construction of a 2,000-seat hall to complement the 3,000-seat Segerstrom Hall, a multipurpose facility that hosts opera performances, Broadway musicals, ballet and orchestral, jazz and pop concerts.

The center’s chairman said the cost of the second hall is now being estimated at $75 million to $100 million, lower than previous estimates of $95 million to $115 million.

The orchestra and Anaheim officials discussed a $70-million concert hall and a $25-million endowment for operation of the hall by the time it opened, Janice Johnson said. The city indicated that it might be able to contribute roughly $50 million to $60 million “and that we would have to do the rest,” she said.

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Although the figures were entirely speculative, she emphasized, the total of $95 million meant that the orchestra would have had to raise from $35 million to $45 million on its own, while continuing to raise about $2 million a year to subsidize its operating budget and, in addition, trying to at least double its own endowment.

By contrast, a concert hall at the center would mean not only less of a fund-raising burden for the Pacific but more freedom to concentrate on its artistic development before the hall was built.

“We’ve come a long way as an orchestra,” Janice Johnson said. “If we are going to continue growing artistically and as an organization, we need a concert hall. The center’s schedule is already so crowded we can’t get more dates there. And we need to play more dates. That’s the only way any orchestra gets stronger--by playing more.”

The orchestra, which has a $6.8-million annual budget and a $3-million endowment, plays 18 classical concerts during its regular season at the center, in addition to pops concerts there, an outdoor summer series at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre and a children’s music series. It also serves as the pit orchestra for most of the center’s international dance programs and occasionally for the Pacific Chorale, one of the five regional groups that regularly perform or present programs in Segerstrom Hall.

Janice Johnson said the orchestra prefers a concert hall over a multipurpose hall largely for two reasons: acoustics and scheduling. “I don’t think you can have a really fine arts complex without a first-class concert hall,” she said. “The beautiful sound that a concert hall can provide will be a great attraction in itself. The best artists will want to perform here.”

Moreover, a concert hall would ensure that the orchestra would have freer reign over the schedule. “I certainly could see us getting along very nicely with the Philharmonic Society,” she said of the county’s major presenter of national and international orchestras.

“But I don’t want us to be in competition for dates with Broadway shows and other things” that could fill the schedule of a multipurpose hall. “I also envision our offices there,” she added. “I don’t know whether the center does.”

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The Pacific, which has its administrative offices in Santa Ana, would be part of a large capital campaign to build the concert hall at the center. But by joining forces with the Philharmonic Society, the center itself and other regional groups such as Opera Pacific and the William Hall Master Chorale, the Pacific would have to raise considerably less money than by going it alone in partnership with Anaheim.

“I think we would have to raise about 50% of the money before they break ground,” Janice Johnson said of the anticipated consortium of groups that would be part of the center’s capital campaign. “We would like to get our endowment up to $6 million or $7 million on our own; and the center would like to have a $25-million endowment by then.”

Janice Johnson could not say how much the Pacific will have to contribute to the campaign, which has yet to begin or even have a goal set.

But whatever it will cost to build a second venue with 2,000 seats at the center, construction of a concert hall instead of a multipurpose hall could save as much as $40 million, experts say.