Venezia: Balboa Theater’s closing chapter has arts dividend

It seems the Newport Beach Arts Commission will receive a windfall now that the Balboa Performing Arts Theater Foundation is folding.

At the foundation’s last board meeting on April 22, its directors, Chairwoman Evelyn Hart, Treasurer Alison Ryffel and Secretary Susan M.Seely, decided to give what’s left in their coffers to the Arts Commission.

“The foundation’s remaining assets, $175,000, would be distributed to the Newport Beach Arts Foundation with the stipulation that the money be used for Performing Arts in the city of Newport Beach, as requested through the Newport Beach Arts Commission with preference to the Balboa Village,” states the foundation’s meeting minutes.

Hart told me she’s glad the money is going to the city’s Arts Commission. She plans to personally deliver the donation at the May 12 City Council meeting.

Hart said the foundation’s bylaws required that the money go to a nonprofit. The organization’s accountants and attorneys are completing the final paperwork to officially close the foundation.

But all is not without controversy as the Balboa theater’s chapter closes. Hart thinks the $175,000 amount is too low.

“It should have been more,” she said.

At the heart of Hart’s discontent is the fact that former foundation president Steve Beazley was paid $50,000 after the project went kaput.

To give you some background, the theater hired Beazley, former CEO of the OC Fair and Event Center, in September 2013 as its new president. At the time he told me his goal was to breathe new life into the project.

By March 2014, when I wrote about the project again, I didn’t hold out much hope Beazley could raise the $2 million needed for the city to match funds and see the project to completion. And even if he could, I didn’t see how the theater could sustain itself without continued city funding.

In the end it didn’t work.

By February 2015, when Beazley and I spoke again, the theater was back in the hands of the city.

Now a life coach, Beazley calls himself a “change agent.”

I asked him why he’d taken on the Balboa Theater gig, since it had loser written all over it from the start.

“It was an against-all-odds project, and at a point in my career I wanted one of those,” he said.

At that time he told me he didn’t see this as a failure, as he was successful in bringing closure to a project that had floundered for decades. Now the city would decide the theater’s fate.

Hart, however, wasn’t happy that Beazley was paid $50,000, and makes no bones about it.

She said his original contract paid him $100,000, and the foundation didn’t renew the contact in the fall of 2014. Beazley said he did have a contract.

But Hart said the 2014 contract was signed by a former board president without any other board members.

Beazley threatened legal action, so the foundation settled for $50,000, she told me.

I called Beazley this week to discuss the contract dispute. Originally, he was to be paid an additional $100,000 for the second year, he said.

“Like any business, the foundation had an obligation to settle any contract,” he told me. “My contract was guaranteed for year two. They didn’t want to go forward, but in settling that second year for $50,000, we met each other half way and that’s amicable.”

Beazley said he’s glad to see where the foundation money is going now.

“I think they are doing the right thing, putting the money in arts programs. That’s terrific,” he said.

So what happens to the theater now?

The Newport council’s plan last year was to turn it into a “Fine Arts Center for art class programming, local Balboa Village event hosting, some movies and more,” City Manager Dave Kiff said.

Kiff estimated construction costs could be in the neighborhood of about $5.8 million.

But it seems the 2015, largely reconfigured City Council, has a different idea. Council members have had discussions about selling the property.

So as the curtain comes down on the Balboa Theater project, the Newport Beach Arts Commission is the organization that will benefit. And the timing couldn’t be more perfect.

Just a few weeks ago I wrote about how Newport Beach Councilman Scott Peotter was gunning for the Arts commissioners, looking to cut all city funding to them.

The commission dodged Peotter’s budget bullet, and with this new windfall, as well as ongoing city funding, it should be in good shape.

Arts Commissioner Lynn Selich, married to Mayor Ed Selich, told me she’s delighted with the Balboa Theater money, which adds to the approximately $50,000 they already have. .

“I’m pretty happy about this,” Selich said.

I bet she is. At least some good came out of this whole Balboa Theater mess.

BARBARA VENEZIA lives in Newport Beach. She can be reached at bvontv1@gmail.com.