COMMENTS & CURIOSITIES:

It’s a home run. Wait, too wimpy. It’s a walk-off home run with two outs and a full count, seventh game of the World Series. That’s it. That’s what the new Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall is.

We had the opportunity to tour the nascent performing arts wow-house last week, and to say jaw dropping is to say nothing at all. Henry Segerstrom and uber-architect Cesar Pelli have undone themselves this time, which ain’t easy. The 2,000-seat concert hall is not only a architectural and technological marvel but will be accompanied by the Samueli Theater, a 500-seat multi-purpose performance space and arts education center.

The whole enchilada de cantata is scheduled for a gala opening on Sept. 15, almost 20 years to the day after the opening of the performing arts center. The new facility will elevate the Orange County Performing Arts Center from one of the nation’s premier performance venues to being the gold standard for the rest of the nation, if not the world, if not the solar system — except for Pluto of course, which as of last week gets no respect — to emulate.

The new concert hall will be tied to the performing arts center and South Coast Repertory by a stunning piazza designed by Peter Walker & Partners, and if that’s not enough wow-factor for you, the piazza will be watched over by a 60-foot-tall work by renowned sculptor Richard Serra. The massive steel plates for the work were fabricated in Germany and brought here, some assembly required. I’ll bet the instructions were huge, at least 12 feet by 18 feet unfolded, and there were probably a few lock washers left over as always, but it’s up and impressive and rock solid.

Eventually, with the addition of a museum and visual arts facility on Town Center Drive, the entire complex will be christened the Segerstrom Center for the Arts.

Of all the sights that stopped us short on Tuesday’s tour, the new hall’s grand foyer was the bell-ringer. Architect Cesar Pelli was looking for a light, airy feel that transports you skyward as you step through the doors. He found it, and then some.

Concert halls tend to be ponderous, church-like spaces that loom over you and make you feel small. Pelli’s masterwork does just the opposite. The curved glass walls leave you connected to the piazza and sky outside, and the soaring lobby, with its circular stairways and curved balconies, seems to go on forever. The stainless steel and crystal chandelier overhead, which can’t really be described — let’s call it a galaxy of silver pendants and sparkling Baccarat crystals — completes the feeling of being lighter-than-air, no easy task in my case.

Without a note being sounded, the concert hall itself is a visual stunner, paneled in blond maple, with 2,000 seats in bright crimson and three adjustable acoustical canopies finished in silver leaf overhead. A C.B. Fisk concert organ, not quite operational yet, dominates the back wall of the stage.

Truth be told, the entire space is an acoustical marvel. Not only the overhead canopies but the walls themselves can be adjusted to fine tune the hall’s acoustics to the performance at hand. I could explain how it all works, but you’d never understand. You got your attenuation, your diffusion, your octave bands, your Hertz and your Avis. It’s very complicated.

As usual though, in the midst of our tour, my mind began to wander. All very impressive, world-class from stem to stern, but I began to wonder about one tiny little detail. It is the one negative I have ever heard about the performing arts center from the day it opened until today. I’ll give you a hint. More women than men complain about it. Good answer — the restrooms.

Ever seen the line for the ladies rooms at the performing arts center? Yikes. Let’s be honest. Women get the short straw when it comes to restrooms in stadiums, movie theaters and concert halls. Yes, it’s awkward to discuss, but women feel the need more often than men do, and once they do, the mechanics of the whole thing are more complicated. There is a lot more unbuttoning and unzipping and pushing down and pulling up and tucking in then rebuttoning and zipping and adjusting going on in there than with men.

There are certain women’s issues I have a hard time understanding, but I feel women’s pain about the restroom issue, a lot. As a long-standing member of the Husband/Significant Other club, I have spent half my life waiting outside ladies’ rooms. There’s not a lot to do outside ladies’ rooms. It’s boring, even if there is a Baccarat chandelier above your head.

I remember listening to an elderly woman in Moscow being interviewed in a long bread line after the Soviet Union collapsed. She said she felt like she had spent half her life waiting outside a bakery. Hope she’s not looking for sympathy, I thought. It’s the same here, only outside ladies’ rooms not bakeries.

I finally worked up the courage to ask our tour guide the big question. Unlike the performing arts center, which has roughly the same restroom capacity as a Boeing 737, how many restrooms will the new concert hall have? He said he didn’t know, exactly, but he was pretty sure that was the first time someone had asked.

Well, ladies, I have some excellent news for you. Through a highly placed confidential source, I was able to find out exactly what the restroom situation will be at Orange County’s newest cultural gemstone. But first, some terminology: Restroom capacity is apparently measured in “people per fixture” — a fixture being a toilet or urinal.

Ready? May we have the envelope please.

The new concert hall will have a ratio of 27 men per fixture — but only 17 women per fixture.

You see, beneath all the burnished wood and curved glass, all the terrazzo and sparkling crystal, when the moment arrives, the restrooms matter just as much as the Rachmaninoff.

Wish I had a different tag line, but nonetheless, I gotta go.