Warhol exhibit boosts MOCA, but picture not so pretty for area hotels. (Up Front).

The Andy Warhol retrospective, now entering its final week, will make money for the Museum of Contemporary Art, hut the show has pumped far fewer dollars into the L.A. economy than anticipated.

As of last week, total revenue from the Warhol exhibit, which closes Aug. 18, had generated $5.4 million for the museum. After subtracting $2.7 million for the cost of bringing the show to the United States from Europe, MOCA will make at least $2.7 million.

That's good news for the downtown museum, which has been facing a $1 million budget deficit after its largest philanthropic donor, Dallas Price, a MOCA trustee, said she couldn't deliver the remaining $6.9 million of her $10 million donation until her money troubles clear up.

Price, with her ex-husband David Price, is co-owner of American Golf Corp. in Santa Monica, which has been mired in financial problems. She had been donating the money in annual $1 million installments. Proceeds from the Warhol exhibition give MOCA a little breathing room to operate at full capacity.

But the exhibition, its only appearance in the United States, is expected to bring only $20 million to $25 million to the L.A. economy, far short of the $130 million that the L.A. Economic Development Corp. had first projected.

One group sorely disappointed by the Warhol exhibition has been the 10 Los Angeles-area hotels that anted up $20,000 each for discounted VIP tickets and art catalogs to include in their Warhol packages.

Not one hotel has come close to recuperating the money they gave the Los Angeles Convention & Visitors Bureau, which took the $200,000 paid by the hotels and used it to offset the nearly $1 million the bureau spent advertising and promoting the Warhol exhibit that opened in May.

"We rolled the dice and came up short," said John Stoddard, general manager of the 900-room Wilshire Grand Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.

Packages fall short

The Wilshire Grand, which anticipated selling 200 Warhol packages that cost a minimum of $129 a night, sold under 50 packages.

Same goes for the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica "We didn't sell a heck of a lot," noted Jim Pedone, the hotel's director of sales and marketing.

While local hotels weren't pleased with their revenue return on Warhol, MOCA officials were.

A total of $1.6 million of the $5.4 million generated from the exhibit came from the 125,000 visitors who have purchased tickets as of last week to see the exhibition of Warhol's silk screens, drawings and paintings.

That's close to the 150,000 visitors the museum projected the show would attract. But it doesn't approximate the success of the Vincent Van Gogh exhibition that brought 821,000 people to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1999.

Corporate sponsors, fundraisers, gala events and new memberships generated $3.8 million during the Warhol exhibit. The museum store, whose revenues are not being included in the revenue tally, sold $1.1 million in merchandise since the exhibition opened.

Local visitors

David Sheatsley, director of research for the Los Angeles Convention & Visitors Bureau, estimates that Warhol visitors will have spent $20 million to $25 million by the time the exhibition closes in another week.

So far the bureau has found that 54 percent of the visitors came from Los Angeles County. Another 24 percent came from California, primarily San Francisco, and 16 percent from other U.S. states, principally Arizona and Florida. Only 6 percent came from outside of the United States. Germans were No. 1 among foreign visitors to the retrospective.

Normally most domestic visitors to L.A. spend an average of $103 per person per day; the Warhol visitor is spending $139. The bulk of that, 34 percent, is going for restaurants, a fact that hasn't gone unnoticed in the downtown area.

Tony DiRaimondo, director of sales and marketing for the Omni Los Angeles Hotel across the street from MOCA, said business at the hotel's Grand Cafe restaurant has increased at least 100 percent ever since the Warhol retrospective opened. However, the Omni saw few takers for its special Warhol package.

"The exhibit has done well with Angelenos from the drive market," DiRaimondo said.