Theater Will Receive Aid and Monitoring

The city Community Redevelopment Agency will give the Los Angeles Theatre Center $832,000 over the next year but will monitor the struggling downtown institution on a monthly basis to make sure it is stepping up its fund raising and reducing its deficit, officials said Thursday.

Under an agreement reached late Wednesday, the theater promised to trim its $1.1-million deficit to $500,000 by Dec. 31 and to $250,000 by next April 30. In exchange, the CRA said it would seek City Council approval for an additional $350,000 grant to LATC.

“Our objective is to make the Theatre Center a pay-as-you-go operation,” CRA Administrator John Tuite said in a statement.

The four-stage theater has received $18 million in CRA funding since it was launched in September, 1985, as a cornerstone of redevelopment efforts on South Spring Street. The agency, which has been criticized for favoring a theater over other needs such as low-cost housing, said it has made no commitment to fund the theater beyond June, 1990.