Making a Dry Run : Fountain: Debut of high-tech Watercourt is more drizzle than dazzle--until the coast is clear. Then the pumps are turned on full-blast.

Operators of Los Angeles’ most unusual arts showcase had hoped to start out with a splash.

Instead, the debut Tuesday of the $17-million, 146-nozzle Watercourt fountain in the downtown high-rise district was more of a washout.

Nervous workers turned off the pumps to the 90,000-gallon centerpiece fountain system before a noontime crowd arrived to watch a Latin jazz group stage the Watercourt’s premier public concert.

They were afraid the Poncho Sanchez band might get electrocuted.

That meant that the audience got the jolt.

Rather than a long-awaited display of dramatic water plumes and cascades that were supposed to mingle “torrents of fiery Latin jazz with a dazzling display of geysers,” all that spectators saw was a leaky-looking trickle behind the musicians.

It was a letdown for downtown office workers who have heard for years that the California Plaza project would feature “elaborate water features” that would be “the first of its kind in the world.”

The 1 1/2-acre Watercourt is a multilevel, gardenlike amphitheater that sits between two office skyscrapers. Designed as a restful place to eat lunch, it can hold about 4,000 for concerts.

An irregularly shaped shallow pond wraps around two small platforms that can be used for intimate performances. The main stage stands between the pond and fountain.

Aside from the ankle-deep pond, the only other water was coming from an anemic spurt from a fixture near the Grand Avenue entrance to the Watercourt.

“I guess that’s the only fountain,” shrugged Elbia Martinez, an investment company secretary who lives in South Gate.

Al Varela, a law firm supervisor who lives in La Crescenta, and Joe Marino, an engineer from Los Angeles, looked in vain for a sign of dancing waters.

“I’ve heard the fountains are supposed to be magnificent,” said concert-goer Neva O’Connell, a downtown hotel administrator who lives in Hacienda Heights.

The concert lasted about half an hour. Many in the crowd of 1,500 were starting to head back to work when the music ended and California Plaza artistic director Michael Alexander took to the Watercourt stage.

He urged everybody to stay put while a work crew hastily removed musical instruments and microphone equipment from the stage. Behind the scenes, Alexander said, workers were firing up the pumps.

About half the audience was on the scene when a swooshing sound came from the granite steps behind the stage. A small surge of water cascaded down the steps. Then a larger surge sent a half-inch-deep wave across the stage where Sanchez and his band had stood a few minutes before.

Seconds later, spurts of water, shot from the fountain’s jets by compressed air, began blasting 40 feet high from a fountain platform behind the stage.

“Wow!” exclaimed concert-goer Sneed Hearn, a TV commercial cameraman who lives in Glendale. “It’s a good thing they got the musicians out of there.”

After the show, fountain creator Alan Robinson was standing shoeless and in rolled-up trousers in front of the computer that controls the fountain from a room beneath the Watercourt--which is built on a platform that extends over Olive Street.

Robinson was pleased with how the water went. A few steps away, so was band member Tony Banda.

“I play the electric bass. I was worried I might get zapped if we got wet,” said Banda, of Norwalk.

Alexander said it may be a few weeks before “we’re finished fine-tuning” the computer program. For now, he said, the computer does not know how to command the fountain to send the backdrop of water plumes into the air without releasing one of the stage-washing waves every few minutes.

But soon, Alexander promised, the Watercourt will be downtown Los Angeles’ biggest liquid asset.