City sues Civic Light Opera for rent
CLO founder James Blackman with his hero, Carol Channing, at the grand re-opening of the RBPAC in 2003. Photo
The city of Redondo Beach last week filed a lawsuit against the Civic Light Opera of the South Bay Cities, seeking $209,000 owed in back rent.
The city in August evicted the CLOSB after not receiving payment for the use of the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center. City officials say that rent is owed for 123 days, covering 76 theatrical performances that occurred in 2010 and 2011.
“The Civic Light Opera sold tickets and collected significant revenues from patrons attending these 76 productions,” said Mayor Mike Gin in a statement. “It is unfortunate that despite our nearly 20 year history of working together, the Civic Light Opera has chosen to ignore their financial obligation to the City of Redondo Beach.”
The parting of ways between the city and the opera company has grown increasingly acrimonious.
CLOSB founder and executive director James Blackman has been in negotiations to utilize the Centinella Valley Union High School District’s sparkling new 1,200 seat performing arts center at Lawndale High School. But Redondo Beach City Attorney Mike Webb in September appeared before the district’s Board of Education and argued that any agreement with the CLOSB would first require an environmental impact review regarding parking and traffic issues.
Blackman said that the CLOSB has every intention of paying its unpaid rent but that the city’s actions are preventing the company from producing the revenue with which to do so. Blackman had hoped to launch the first of two postponed shows, “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” by mid-December, but has been forced to further postpone the show as a parking study is completed. He noted that in 20 years in Redondo he’d never been required to do such a study.
“Literally, it’s like shooting the horse, and then saying, ‘How come it’s not pulling the cart anymore?’” Blackman said.
The city claims that as recently as July 14 Blackman indicated rent would be paid “within 24 hours.” The city has not received a rent payment since February 2010. Webb said the only recourse left was to file the lawsuit.
“It’s a regrettable but necessary step,” Webb said. “The CLO repeatedly keeps saying they are going to pay the money, but that has been going on now for a very long time. The city needed to take steps to protect its interests and be fiscally responsible for its taxpayers.”
Webb said the city asked for an environmental impact report because the Lawndale facility is near the Redondo border and noted that Lawndale filed a similar request for a Redondo project in the past. He said that the city didn’t make a request at another potential CLO venue, in El Segundo, because it would not impact Redondo.
City officials in the past have credited the CLO for its central role in the development of the Performing Arts Center. When the company was founded in 1991, the building – the former Aviation High School – was in a dilapidated state. The CLO’s unlikely success, which eventually included four prestigious Ovation awards, fired the imagination of city officials. After the city invested $14 million in upgrading the facility, Blackman emceed grand opening ceremonies in 2003 at which assistant city manager Sue Armstrong said the CLO had “created a constituency for the place.”
“I can tell you the reason the building looks the way it does now is because there was an extended period of time where the city was very pro Civic Light Opera and felt that it was a certain asset and a value,” Blackman said. “Gosh, even Mike Gin volunteered there for years….At some point it just turned off completely.”
Blackman said the relationship between the city and the CLO began to sour about five years ago with the arrival of new city management. He said the city had always trusted that bills would eventually get paid because over two decades the CLO had proven itself. More recently, Blackman said that the city scuttled corporate sponsorship ideas and a proposal celebrating the CLO’s 20th anniversary, in which longtime patrons would have their names put on seats that would have generated $2.5 million.
“It’s just so damned sad,” Blackman said. “…I can’t make sense of the last three-and-a-half years of what happened over there, and I can’t make sense of why we couldn’t figure this thing out and they just kind of showed me the door by a lack of action or lack of going forward.”
Webb likened the notion of the CLO having naming right to seats to a renter having the right to do whatever he or she wants with an apartment despite not owning the building. The city, he argued, had been extremely flexible with the Civic Light Opera but the company had never before been so far in arrears. Webb said it became particularly troublesome in a time when the city has had to cut the pay of all city employees.
“I think the city has bent over backwards,” Webb said. “”There is no other private landlord that would have been as patient as the city has been up until now…I find it interesting that I keep seeing reports they have agreements in other cities and when you look at the discussions, they are talking about getting paid upfront – which, as someone who is owed more than $200,000 for performances…is a little concerning.”
The CLO still produces shows at the Hermosa Beach Playhouse, recently launched partnerships with the El Segundo School District and the El Segundo Playhouse at the high school’s newly renovated performing arts center.
Blackman vowed that Redondo Beach would receive its rent, with or without a lawsuit.
“We need to pay it off and will pay it off because I have a responsibility to the citizens that live in the city of Redondo Beach, and I don’t want them to have a feeling, as they stand back from this at the end of day and go, ‘Well he moved in here and paid rent and then he left and didn’t pay his rent’….That can’t be the ending story, and it won’t be the ending story.”
But the holidays, Blackman said, are going to be bleak for his staff as they await the next act for the CLOSB. He expressed anger at city staff for their role in keeping this from happening.
“I’m sure they’ll go home and be fat and happy and rub their hands together over Thanksgiving and go, ‘I want to give thanks that I have a job with the city and I am in a powerful position and spent my last three months making sure James and his entire staff are getting their butts kicked and are not getting paychecks and we are hurting them to the best of our abilities,” Blackman said. “I am sure they are going to have a lovely holiday celebrating that.” ER