CRA Prods Theatre Center to Show Greater Fiscal Stability

Expressing uneasiness with the “cash management” of the Los Angeles Theatre Center on Spring Street, the Community Redevelopment Agency has urged the theater’s board to demonstrate “fiscal responsibility and maturity” if it expects to receive further public funding.

The redevelopment agency, currently under fire from some City Council members for how it spends its money, said it is willing to give the struggling LATC an additional $350,000 beyond what was previously promised, provided the board steps up its fund-raising campaign and meets several other conditions.

The theater, located in a 1916 building once used as a bank, has pledged to raise $1.3 million during the current fiscal year--$550,000 less than what the CRA is asking for.

Over the last few years, the CRA has allocated $18 million in funding and $7 million in loans to the theater, a spokesman said. The four-stage facility, which opened in September, 1985, now draws a weekly audience of 4,400, according to Bill Bushnell, artistic producing director.

In deciding to subsidize the theater, a showcase for local talent and avant-garde interpretations of the classics, the CRA hoped it would help spur redevelopment of a blighted downtown area. But the neighborhood improvements have been slow in coming, and the agency has drawn criticism for singling out the costly undertaking at the expense of other social and cultural needs.

In a letter Tuesday to Ronald C. Peterson, a downtown attorney and member of the theater’s board, CRA Chairman James M. Wood said that before the agency could seek further LATC funding from the City Council “we will need a higher level of comfort of your willingness to meet conditions that assure us of fiscal responsibility and maturity. . . .”

Wood noted that two years ago, the CRA approved a $4.9-million budget for LATC facilities over the following five years. With three years to go, he wrote, only $951,948 remains.

“They have not met the terms of that five-year agreement,” CRA Administrator John Tuite said in an interview.

Peterson, while acknowledging that the theater in the past did not always meet its fund-raising goals, said he was surprised by Wood’s letter, since $1.3 million was raised last year from such sources as Arco and the Times Mirror Foundation.

‘Lived Within Our Means’

“During the last year we’re quite proud of having lived within our means, in terms of expenses being covered by income,” Peterson said. “If they’re talking about old history, I’d like to hear what they have to say.”

Calling LATC a “marvelous pioneering effort,” Tuite said Wood’s letter was not intended as a threat. “We’re convinced that a major cultural center on Spring Street can survive and thrive,” he said. “There’s no question about our commitment. . . . It’s a critical and crucial part of the revitalization of Spring Street.”

But he said the agency has always intended that the theater become self-sufficient. As one of the conditions, the CRA said the theater would have to deposit all its subscription proceeds in an escrow account, drawing from it only as plays are actually produced.

Peterson said that his theater, like most others, “to some extent uses subscription money to put on plays.”