‘The Best Acoustics in the World’--for $200 Million

The bad news came last week: The ambitious expansion of the Orange County Performing Arts Center is going to cost $200 million, not the $100 million that a center staffer had guessed earlier.

Now center officials are offering what they say is the good news: The $200 million will buy Orange County two concert halls that will be the best in the world, along with two rehearsal halls and a cafe. Officials hope they will open in fall 2004.

In an interview with The Times, Jerry E. Mandel, the center’s president, conceded the new price tag, the first estimate from professional planners, may have shocked some.

“People say, ‘$200 million? Wow! Are you building a Taj Mahal?’

“And we say, no. Disney Hall [in Los Angeles] is going to be in excess of $260 million. The new hall in Philadelphia will be in excess of $250 million. [Our estimate] is well within the range of what a world-class hall costs. We’re not out of line.”

Question: What will you get for $200 million?

Answer: We will have a 1,800-seat concert hall with the best acoustics in the world. There are 2,000 seats when you include the choir loft behind the stage. When there’s no chorus, those seats can be sold. They are great seats. These are concerts, not plays; you’ll hear the same thing. You are very close and facing the conductor. They have been very popular in other halls.

Then there is the 500-seat music hall. This is going to be a flexible space for chamber music recitals, new music, jazz, education, business meetings, banquets. There’ll be kitchen facilities.

There will be a very beautiful lobby so people will feel they’re in a grand hall. That is very important.

Q: Will the hall’s interior be as grand as the lobby?

A: Lobbies are grand, but concert halls themselves are not. Everything inside the hall impacts the sound. You want beauty, but wood floors and simple lines.

Russell Johnson [the theater design and acoustics expert hired for the project] makes tunable halls. They’re adjustable like a musical instrument, and each one he builds is better than the previous one.

He has sound chambers in the walls that you can open or close. He has what he calls a canopy on the ceiling that you can move up or down. In Lucerne [Switzerland, where Johnson designed a large concert hall], I could hear each instrument in a string quartet.

Acoustics is still an art. It’s not done in a computer. This is why it’s so expensive. No two halls are alike. You build them from scratch.

Q: What else are you building?

A: We’ll have two more rehearsal halls. One will be for the Pacific Symphony as a permanent rehearsal hall. It will have a very high ceiling that gives a similar sound to the performance hall. To have the rehearsal hall in the same facility and on the same floor where they perform is a great advantage for them.

The other rehearsal hall will probably be on a second floor and be used for choral music, dance and plays. We ultimately want this to be a place where new Broadway shows are developed, and they need this kind of rehearsal space.

There also will be a nice cafe within the building. We’re not going to compete with the restaurants nearby. Perhaps we’ll open for lunch, and before and after shows. Just light meals and maybe piano music. It won’t be huge, just some place to go after the show.

Q: You foresee this being more than a place to see concert hall performances?

A: I hope it’ll be something like Manhattan. You see a show there and you always wind up at a late dinner and going to a jazz club. If you think about it, when all the halls are running, you’re going to have a lot of people in this area. Restaurants will stay open. You could have late-night jazz and cabaret. We will have this plaza that connects all the buildings. We can do much of this outdoors. It’ll be alive here.

Q: What about traffic and parking problems?

A: Traffic studies have been conducted, and since we run evenings, there won’t be a problem. The 405 and 55 [freeways] will eventually have new offramps directly to the Avenue of the Arts. You get off the freeway and you’re right here. Today almost everyone parks in the garage at the current center. The one nearby at the Westin [hotel] has plenty of room.

Q: Once these new halls open, will your endowment fund and fund-raising efforts still be sufficient for operations?

A: Our operating budget is about $28 million to $29 million a year. About 75% comes from ticket sales. About 25% comes from fund-raising and our endowment, which is about $20 million and pays about $850,000 a year. Each year our fund-raising department must raise about $6.2 million for us to operate.

Keep this in mind: We already have a staff. We do not foresee adding a significant number of new people to run the new halls. We won’t be adding any senior executives or box-office supervisors. The new halls will probably cost about $1.5 million to run.

And when the new halls open, they will free up Segerstrom Hall [the existing, 3,000-seat auditorium], and we will be able to have longer runs of Broadway shows. That will bring in more money. Broadway shows are the only production from which we make a profit.

Q: Will you be selling naming rights?

A: Absolutely! The first is to name the concert hall. Another will be the music hall. These will raise multiple millions. There will be an opportunity to name the lobby, dressing rooms, rehearsal rooms, seats--many naming opportunities. Two hundred million dollars is a lot of money to raise. And this is all private money. We’ve never taken a cent of government money; we don’t believe in it.