Pageant of Masters Signs Agreement to Leave Laguna Beach

Directors of the Pageant of the Masters art celebration signed a tentative lease agreement to move its longtime home in Laguna Beach to nearby San Clemente.

But even as pageant officials lauded Tuesday’s signing as a significant development in the 68-year-old event’s drive to expand, critics insisted that the agreement will only fuel efforts to recall its embattled board of directors.

“What they’re doing is just incredibly arrogant. It’s brazen,” said Bruce Rasner, a lawyer and president of the Committee to Keep the Festival in Laguna Beach. “I’m actually very pleased by it. Now our recall will succeed. . . . And let me tell you, a new board will rescind that agreement.”

About 2,700 festival exhibitors and artists involved in the pageant can vote in the recall, probably in late September.

The pageant, a quirky spectacle in which performers portray famous works of art, annually attracts almost a quarter of a million visitors who spend about $6 million on restaurants, parking and trinkets at the seaside resort.

The lease agreement that the board unanimously approved is not legally binding, officials said. However, it does solidify the terms of a future deal and allows officials in San Clemente to begin work on environmental impact reports and architectural drawings for a new pageant site. It also renews a pledge by the board to negotiate exclusively with San Clemente.

“In a manner of speaking, we’ve crossed the Rubicon,” said Stephen Thames, the festival’s general counsel. “It’s like an engagement.”

Sherri Butterfield, president of the pageant board, agreed. “This is a significant step forward in the evolution of the pageant,” Butterfield said.

Reaction to the news was sharply divided between officials in San Clemente and Laguna Beach.

“We are very pleased at this point,” said David Lund, director of economic development in San Clemente. “We will continue to work closely with the board.”

In Laguna Beach, officials promised that the battle will continue, recall or not.

“They want a commercial enterprise, and we can’t accommodate that,” Laguna Beach City Manager Kenneth C. Frank said of the pageant’s board. “If the recall is successful, no doubt the festival will stay here. If it’s not, we’re looking at various types of litigation to retain it.”

Laguna Mayor Kathleen Blackburn said a move out of the city would be like “cultural theft.”

Pageant board members said the event and accompanying Festival of Arts must be moved because the current location at the city-owned Irvine Bowl Park is in need of repair and because Laguna Beach officials have refused to lower the rent.

The festival board said it could not agree on a new lease arrangement with Laguna Beach, which charged the organization $585,000 rent last year. The festival’s current lease with Laguna Beach expires September 2001.

In June, the San Clemente City Council offered the festival a lease for a 20-acre site that could be ready by May 2003. Annual rent would begin at $1 and increase to at least $150,000 by 2014.

Eight people are scheduled to run for three seats on the festival board in its annual fall election, including Rasner.