Eli Broad has the heart of a Peace Corps volunteer and the head of a hard-nosed businessman.

On the one hand, his genuine love and support of Los Angeles has greatly enriched our city. On the other hand, he’s caused vitriolic tension with many of our regional stakeholders who question whether one multibillionaire should disproportionately influence our collective future because of his outsized checkbook.

Either way you look at it, his personal contradiction has rightly sparked serious debates over the years about what it means to be a truly global city and how we should go about getting there. If anything, Broad has given us an opportunity to have a dialogue about who we are and who we want to become. Our latest debate about his next philanthropic move is one of our most important.

Broad has been pushing for a new museum in the heart of downtown – between Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Museum of Contemporary Art. His museum would house more than 2,000 pieces of rare art, be given a $200 million endowment, create desperately needed jobs, become a major tourist attraction and intangibly add rich benefits to our civic landscape. It would also likely fulfill the 1 percent arts requirement for the proposed cultural renaissance known as the Grand Avenue Project.

So the idea of the Broad Collective, as the museum would be tentatively called, looks pretty good. But if we look beyond the surface of the proposal and start to think more creatively about this space – culturally, financially, and geographically – we have to begin asking ourselves: Does it make sense to have Broad’s museum in this particular space? Or is there another proposal or unspoken idea that would be a much better fit? This is a discussion we need to have among ourselves.

Culturally, a myriad of arguments can be made about which specific type of art institution should be used for the 1 percent art requirement – there will be pros and cons for museums vs. theaters, for example – and deciding in favor of one over another would be an almost completely subjective decision based heavily on personal preferences. But truth be told, Broad’s personal preferences – rightly or wrongly – are currently the only serious driving force behind making any type of new cultural institution happen. And he knows it and is taking advantage of it.

“Like venture capitalists,” Broad said, “we look for untapped opportunities, and we make strategic investments.

“As investors,” he continued, “we expect a quantifiable return” on charitable contributions – in other words, the most bang for our buck. But if we stop to think more deeply about these statements, and we stop to think more deeply about the future of Grand Avenue, does Broad’s Collective get the most bang for our buck?

Maximum benefit

Of course, Broad’s museum stands to potentially gross more than $10 million from taxpayers from this investment, but the bigger question is: Will Los Angeles get the most bang for itself – or maximum “quantifiable return” as Broad called it – as measured by newly generated jobs, tourism and tax revenue by accepting his museum?

After all, if you survey the stubborn financial realities of our great non-profit museums here in Los Angeles – the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, MOCA, and others – they are less tax revenue producers and job creators than they are priceless cultural symbols when compared to institutions like the Kodak and Pantages theatres. So in this regard, if we were thinking purely like venture capitalists, would it make more sense to pass on this particular Broad proposal and instead ask him – or somebody else – for a performance theater similar to the Pantages to put in its place?

By doing this we could create a 21st century West Coast Broadway theater district on Grand Avenue by having Disney Concert Hall, the Ahmanson, the L.A. Opera and a new Pantages-like institution housed right next to each other. Not only would this add more splendor and magic to downtown, but it would certainly be a more strategic investment and produce a more quantifiable return.

But the point is not whether you favor a theater over a museum (though I think you should favor a culturally beautiful tax revenue-producing and job-creating theater in this economy); the point is that we need to look at all of our options and carefully conduct a cost-benefit analysis for each. And Eli Broad has once again generously given us the opportunity to do so.

So whether you have the heart of a Peace Corps volunteer or the head of a hard-nosed businessman – or, like Broad, a little bit of both – please contribute to this meaningful dialogue about the future of Grand Avenue and the future of our city. After all, this is one of the most important gifts we can collectively give to Los Angeles, and if it’s worth Eli Broad’s time, it’s worth our time, too.

Rob Carpenter is an entrepreneur, writer and commissioner on the Board of Transportation for the city of Los Angeles.