ALLIANCE OF ELITES TUNED IN TO AID MUSIC HALL : POLITICIANS, BUSINESS FUEL HOPE FOR PROJECT.

Byline: Reed Johnson Daily News Staff Writer

If the Walt Disney Concert Hall eventually gets built, the city of Los Angeles may have the sport of ice hockey to thank.

For it was on an L.A. rink that hockey enthusiasts Richard Riordan and Frank O. Gehry first began forming a friendship, one that helps explain why the long-stalled $265 million concert hall appears to have found new life.

At a downtown press conference Wednesday, Riordan and the Santa Monica-based architect were among the dignitaries on hand to salute the Atlantic Richfield Company Foundation. The petroleum giant plans to donate $10 million over five years toward construction of the futuristic, 2,300-seat downtown concert hall that Gehry designed as part of an expanded Music Center.

Also present was Eli Broad, chairman and CEO of SunAmerica, a major backer of the hall and a close friend of the mayor's. Not coincidentally, Broad once hired Gehry to design his Brentwood home.

The new hall, the mayor declared, will unite great music and music lovers ``in perfect harmony.'' But perhaps even sweeter to the hall's boosters was evidence that the city's political, business and cultural elites finally are humming the same tune, after years of discordance and false starts surrounding the project.

On Wednesday, Broad attributed some of the project's past troubles to a lack of direction from the top.

``You did not have the political leadership of the city, you didn't have the corporate involvement,'' he said.

That situation apparently changed within the past four weeks as several major donors stepped forward with checks in hand, including Arco, the Times Mirror Foundation ($5 million), the mayor and Broad ($5 million each) and an anonymous patron ($7.5 million).

While supporters still must raise $17 million more by July 1, and at least an additional $130 million to complete the project, the hall's prospects look brighter than at any time since the Disney family pledged $50 million to develop the 3.6-acre site nine years ago.

A major reason is the network of personal and business relationships that has coalesced around the hall. As Andrea L. Van de Kamp, chairwoman of the Music Center of Los Angeles County, put it Wednesday, ``It's all about partnerships, and it's also about friendships in caring about the arts.''

To some observers, those alliances look remarkably similar to the ones that have been shaping downtown's cultural profile since the current Music Center complex - comprising the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Mark Taper Forum and Ahmanson Theater - was built some three decades ago.

``It's pretty much the same,'' said Xandra Kayden, adjunct professor at the School of Public Policy and Social Research at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The main difference between now and the 1960s, Kayden said, is that many of the city's new cultural donors tend to be multinational corporations, rather than home-grown companies operating out of a traditional patrician sense of noblesse oblige, ``so in a way it's harder (to raise funds).''

Although she described Arco as ``a classic example'' of ``a leader in corporate citizenship,'' Kayden said that downtown Los Angeles now is dominated by companies with no particular allegiance to the city's cultural well-being, which creates a prominent role for a well-connected mayor.

``This is Riordan's strength, this is what we elected him for: He's a rich businessman who has rich business friends,'' Kayden said.

If the emerging power structure behind the concert hall looks familiar, the hall's potential customer base could be less so.

At Wednesday's press conference, there was renewed talk of the need for the Disney hall to reach beyond the Music Center's core constituency of the white and the wealthy, to a younger, more ethnically diverse audience.

In an interview, Broad said the hall must be used to attract ``communities that didn't exist 30 years ago,'' or else were virtually ignored by the city's predominantly white and wealthy arts establishment.

Yet it could be difficult to entice groups that have felt excluded in the past.

``Our community doesn't go there (the Music Center) because there isn't any material that they can understand or care about,'' said Carmen Zapata, a veteran Broadway and film actress and co-founder and president of The Bilingual Foundation of the Arts.

``Now if this is going to be another space to do the same thing in, I think that's going to be money down the drain. It's certainly not going to be helpful to our community.''

Nor is it clear whether Hollywood will choose to support the new facility. At least one major player, the Geffen Foundation, whose multimedia patron David Geffen has contributed upward of $35 million to various cultural projects, already has declined.

``We were (approached) many, many months ago, but we ended up not taking the meeting,'' said Andy Spahn, the Geffen Foundation's president.

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PHOTO Recent promises of million-dollar donations has revived plans to finish for the Walt Disney Concert Hall.