Disney Hall offers lessons in intense lawyering

The Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall pushed onto the Los Angeles skyline only after 16 years of political squabbles, cost overruns, numerous design changes and intense negotiations among a cadre of lawyers.

Several attorneys involved in the project graduated from USC Law, and two of them spoke with Professor George Lefcoe's Real Estate Law class during a field trip to the concert hall last week.

O'Malley Miller '76, a real estate attorney at Munger, Tolles & Olson, described the torturous talks over construction, ownership and operation of the concert hall among the city and county of Los Angeles, the Disney family, the Community Redevelopment Agency, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Music Center of Los Angeles County.

Negotiations got so bogged down that the project came to a standstill in 1995, even though construction on the $110-million underground parking structure had already begun. It wasn't until Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, attracted international attention that momentum on the project reignited.

"When the money people in Los Angeles saw what Gehry had done in Bilbao, it changed everything in terms of the fundraising" for the concert hall," O'Malley said.

Fred Nicholas '52 represented Lillian Disney and the Disney family during the project's first eight years - working pro bono. Gibson Dunn & Crutcher real estate partner Amy Forbes '84, who worked on the project from 1987 to 1998, has called Nicholas "a hero" for keeping it alive through its most turbulent period.

Asked why he poured nearly a decade of his life into the project for free, Nicholas responded, "I've had a long life in the law. I felt that at this stage in my career that I wanted to give something back to the community. I've always felt that lawyers have to give to society."