Between the Lines -- Byron de Arakal

You’re not mistaken. That is the sound of an organ heard spilling from

the chambers -- make that Big Top -- of the Costa Mesa City Council in

recent weeks. And it’s apt accompaniment -- that rather annoying tangle

of burps and whistles -- for the curious spectacle that I’ve come to call

the Noguchi Follies.

Now, the name implies some comedic bent. But really there is none

here. The positively bizarre and protracted torture of Commonwealth

Partners, LLC, to win the City Council’s blessing of its Two Town Center

redevelopment plan reminds me more of something Nathaniel Hawthorne might

script -- a gripping cold-sweat nightmare with a clown playing music in

the background.

In it, up is down, left is right, perpetuity means useful life and 25

years means 25 years. And in it, James R. Anderson -- Commonwealth’s

managing partner -- is screaming in terror but no sound is coming out.

Lost? Me too.

Here’s what we have. Commonwealth Partners is a development concern

and owner of the Two Town Center campus adjacent to the Orange County

Performing Arts Center. Smack in the middle of the commercial center is

the revered California Scenario sculpture garden created by the late

master sculptor, Isamu Noguchi. For art aficionados, the Noguchi work is

to them what the Kaaba is to Muslims. That is to say eternally important.

The problem is this. Commonwealth’s financial partner -- the vastly

wealthy California Public Employees Retirement System or CalPERS -- is a

tad dubious of specific demands made by certain council members regarding

Commonwealth’s obligation to protect the Noguchi gardens. In the tortured

word -- art -- of the project’s development agreement, the city wants

Commonwealth to maintain and preserve the California Scenario “in

perpetuity.” That means “forever” in most saloons.

Now, in the realm of sophisticated real estate investments,

contractual language that requires some obligation for a term that

approaches infinity is to be avoided like tapeworm. CalPERS, according to

Commonwealth, would prefer something along the lines of 25 years. Perhaps

a little longer.

Indeed, the original language of the Two Town Center development

agreement obligated Commonwealth to look after the gardens for 25 years.

Had the council agreed to that then, the deal would be done and I’d be

writing about Sid Soffer. But 25 years wasn’t nearly long enough to

Councilwoman Linda Dixon’s way of thinking. Mayor Libby Cowan and

Councilwoman Karen Robinson agreed. So attorneys from both sides were

sent away to the great rubber room where attorneys hash things out with

instructions to do better.

This is when the Noguchi Follies began to get weird, in my estimation.

It’s when Rod Serling showed up in his black suit smoking a cigarette.

Over the course of the next couple of council meetings, the city’s

attorneys presented new Noguchi gardens language that had been ironed out

in private negotiations with Commonwealth’s legal beagles. I assume that,

else the revised documents would not have been submitted for council

approval.

Yet even as the anticipation of council blessing hung in the air, the

deals repeatedly and utterly fell apart.

First, Commonwealth was to maintain the Noguchi gardens for the

“useful life” of the project’s buildings. Some thought that meant 10,000

years, others believed that meant as long as the buildings were standing.

Still, more folks thought it meant so long as the Two Town Center

structures remained Class A facilities as defined by the Building Owners

and Managers Assn. It was as if the players in this macabre tale were

using Mad magazine instead of a dictionary. So there was no deal.

Then, for one brief shining moment, sanity prevailed and the term of

Commonwealth’s obligation to maintain the garden was back at 25 years.

This, of course, flummoxed Dixon, Costa Mesa’s artistic conscience who

steadfastly pushed for “in perpetuity.” Nevertheless, Cowan returned to

believing that 25 years was sufficient, and the council sent the

attorneys off one last time to tack down the corners of the agreement.

The March 19 City Council meeting was to be Commonwealth’s day of

triumph. It turned out to be its incubus. The council chambers were

littered with passionate Noguchi devotees -- arriving late to the

nightmare, but nonetheless arriving -- convinced that after 25 years,

Anderson and Commonwealth would be taking jackhammers to the sculpture

garden. Cowan swung an additional about face, again joining Dixon on the

“in perpetuity” bandwagon along with Robinson. In so doing, she obliquely

asserted that Commonwealth had negotiated in bad faith and that the

company’s insistence on a 25-year preservation term “is their negotiating

stance.” The sure deal had become no deal.

So there stood Commonwealth’s Anderson with a look on his face that

was begging someone to wake him up. It was if he was surrounded by Oompa

Loompas -- “Oompa, Loompa, doo ba dee doo, we’ve got another puzzle for

you” -- pointing fingers at him as if they were gazing in horror upon an

evil scourge bent on ridding the city of its most-prized artistic

treasure. All of which defies reality.

Nevermind that Anderson has long been an active proponent of public

art. That he has, on Commonwealth’s behalf, steadfastly pledged to

protect the Noguchi gardens so long as the company owns Two Town Center.

Forget that he championed the public art presentations at Los Angeles’

Library Square and Milwaukee’s Riverwalk Plaza. That he studied Art at

the Sorbonne in Paris and hatched the idea of the Costa Mesa Theater Arts

District Plan, of which the Two Town Center project is to be a part.

And dismiss that he donated a million bucks worth of land to the city

for a freeway offramp directly accessing the arts district. Or that he’s

pledged to donate 1% of the Two Town Center project’s cost to finance new

public art within the Theater Arts District.

The irony of the Noguchi Follies is that whatever length of time is

settled upon in the Two Town Center development agreement is irrelevant,

even though Cowan claims it to be an insurance policy.

That’s because the document itself is, by law, only good for 20 years.

And any future City Council has the legal authority to amend it at a

future date or throw the thing out altogether. But this doesn’t seem to

matter. As Robinson has said, the city needs to “send a message that

public art is an important asset worth preserving.”

Perhaps. But the city should not be so dogmatic and paranoid that it

is willing to ascribe sinister motives to developers who share its

interest in promoting and protecting public art.

It shouldn’t make a practice of inserting legally impotent political

statements in development contracts.

Otherwise, it will signal that the city believes public art supersedes

a developer’s fiduciary responsibility to preserve and enhance the value

of its real estate holdings. And who wants to develop real estate in a

city that believes that?

In the meantime, the organ music plays on.

* BYRON DE ARAKAL is a writer and communications consultant. He lives

in Costa Mesa. Readers may reach him with news tips and comments via

e-mail at [email protected].