Businessman Donates $100,000 for Arts Park

Louis Foster, one of the San Fernando Valley’s wealthiest businessmen, has donated $100,000 to the Cultural Foundation, a private group that is trying to build an arts complex in the Sepulveda Basin.

The donation comes in the form of a matching gift, meaning that the foundation must raise an additional $100,000 by March 9 to receive the money. Foundation officials say they are well on the way to meeting that requirement.

Foster also has stipulated that the donation go toward operating funds--money that is paid out for rent, office supplies and other expenses that keep the foundation going.

“That’s unusual,” said Linda Kinnee, the foundation’s executive director. “Usually donors want a building or a plaque. But he knows that for us to do what we want to do, we need a good operating base.”

This is the third large donation Foster has made to the foundation in two years. In January, 1988, he gave $25,000. The following August, he donated $50,000 through his 20th Century Industries, a $650-million a year insurance company.

The Cultural Foundation is a group of Valley businessmen and arts patrons who are hoping to build a $5-million Arts Park L.A. amid 60 acres of rolling hills in the basin. Arts Park, as it is envisioned, would include a theater, a museum, an open-air amphitheater, an art center and clusters of workshops.