Fiscal Ills Force Foundation to Scale Back Gifts

The Leo Freedman Foundation, one of Orange County’s major arts benefactors, will continue to donate far less until the Freedman Forum Concert Theatre it owns is sold, a foundation official has announced.

Since 1991, the Anaheim-based charitable trust has given a total of about $600,000 to $700,000 to various arts groups annually. But it began reducing that amount by about 50% this year and recently put the Anaheim theater up for sale because it has failed to secure consistent renters for the venue since 1994.

That has forced the trust to draw on income from other investments--or to rely on principal--for its grants.

“We’ve come to the decision that we can’t keep on doing this and depleting our other investments,” foundation trustee Ellis Stern said Friday.

The foundation expects to continue to donate as much as $400,000 annually, Stern said, and will make good on its promised long-term grants. Such gifts include the three-year, $600,000 grant it announced for the Pacific Symphony last year.

“But we’re just not going to make any major new commitments” Stern said, “until we decide what we’re doing with the theater.”

The news clearly isn’t positive for local arts organizations. The foundation has given six-figure grants to such institutions as the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, the Orange County Performing Arts Center and the Pacific Symphony. But an official at the Pacific, which has received hefty allotments for programs and educational activities since 1992, wasn’t stewing.

“Obviously, if we’re forced to take a cut, we’d have to find replacement funding,” Executive Director John Forsyte said. But “the reality is the Leo Freedman Foundation has indicated its commitment.”

The 2,500-seat Freedman Forum, formerly known as the Celebrity Theatre, once generated as much as $350,000 in rental income annually, Stern said. It was a thriving pop venue in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.

Since then, however, the theater has mostly been vacant in the wake of management problems and competition from other nearby venues that forced out various operators.

The foundation is hoping to get between $6 million and $8 million for the site, and it has approached at least one potential buyer whose identity Stern would not disclose.

An agreement with the city of Anaheim stipulates that the building must be used as a theater, and while such restrictions could be eased, Stern said, the city sees the venue as a magnet for business. The foundation also would prefer to maintain the status quo.

“The building [fits] nicely with our mission, which is to promote the arts in Orange County and Anaheim,” Stern said. He didn’t rule out a change, however.

“Obviously, we want to make it [into] some sort of income-producing property.”