Panel Explores Garden Grove’s Uneasy Relationship With Arts

GARDEN GROVE — “O! that way madness lies.”

Garden Grove Symphony board member Mark Leyes drew laughs as he invoked Shakespeare on Tuesday night as a warning to cultural groups seeking government funding--specifically, groups that go, hat in hand, before the city’s notoriously non-supportive council.

Leyes was in the audience of a panel discussion billed as “The Arts--How They Affect Garden Grove’s Economic Vitality” but which was less a lesson in finance than an excuse for arts supporters to gripe about the city’s anti-arts stance and discuss what to do about it.

The council “not only doesn’t support the arts, it enthusiastically doesn’t support the arts,” said Rick Stein, former managing director of the Grove Shakespeare Festival, now executive director of the Laguna Playhouse.

“We have some of the hidden treasures of the county, and we hide them deeper and deeper,” complained Yaakov Dvir-Djerassi, general manager of the Garden Grove Symphony.

Arts support in the city reached its nadir in the summer of 1988, when the City Council voted to give the Grove Theatre Company just $20,000 of an $83,000 subsidy request. The action was called part of a “philosophical dispute” over the artistic direction of the respected company, which produces plays at the indoor Gem Theatre downtown and at the adjacent outdoor Festival Amphitheatre. Some council members called the fare too sophisticated for what they called the city’s “hard-hat” constituents.

The council eventually gave the company $53,000, stipulating that all city funding be phased out over the following three years. This year, the company’s subsidy dropped to $23,000.

Tuesday’s panel included representatives of two North County cities--Brea and Fullerton--that are relatively generous in their arts giving. Brea City Manager Frank Benest brought along a survey in which “quality-of-life” issues were rated the most important factor by businesses determining a new site, over transportation and availability of labor.

Where cities were once concerned primarily with providing police, street and sewer services, they are increasingly dealing with the “infrastructure of the spirit,” Benest said. “Quality-of-life issues are, in fact, economic development issues.”

In addition, Benest said, cultural attractions can bring out-of-town dollars into the local economy. Football teams have become sought-after commodities, but Benest cited a survey of 20 major American cities in which arts events actually outdrew sporting events.

Dvir-Djerassi brought up the example of Ashland, Ore., home to a popular Shakespeare festival that pumps an estimated $60 million a year into the local economy. But Greg Devereaux, director of housing and neighborhood development for Garden Grove, warned that such examples are not always entirely applicable.

Ashland, he said, is an isolated city in which festival visitors are likely to stay in hotels and eat in restaurants. “If you go to see Shakespeare in Garden Grove,” Devereaux said, “you may eat in Orange and stay in Anaheim, or just go home to Long Beach.”

Devereaux added that he was not arguing against support of the arts in Garden Grove but rather encouraging organization directors to use realistic examples. “We need to determine where dollars are being spent,” he said.

Garden Grove resident James Caron expressed discomfort with all the money talk and the idea that the value of the arts must always be expressed in dollar figures.

But the “art for art’s sake” argument, whatever its inherent merits, simply does not wash with city leaders who must choose between budgeting for a number of worthy causes, from child care to senior services, noted Judith Peterson of the Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton.

Leyes proposed sidestepping the political process altogether by earmarking funds from a special source, such as a hotel bed tax, for arts organizations. The idea has been used in many cities and was recommended last year by a Garden Grove advisory committee. No action has been taken on the proposal.

Stein closed Tuesday’s discussion by warning that the city must come up with some solution or risk losing its theater company.

During the Grove Shakespeare Festival’s 1988 crisis, several nearby cities stepped forward with proposals to take the company in, he said. Today 90% of the Grove’s grant support comes from outside the city, and if community support does not increase, the company “will have to follow the money.”