Greensboro Takes First Steps Toward Performing Arts Center | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: The author of this post is Sam A. Hieb, who is a contributor to the Carolina Journal, John Hood Publisher.

    City officials say midsize venue needed to replace War Memorial Auditorium

    GREENSBORO  -  "Game changer." "Reinventing our city." "Ensuring the future of our city."

    Lofty rhetoric for a performing arts center, but that's the way the majority of the Greensboro City Council views the proposed $60 million downtown performing arts center.

    The council took a major step toward making the performing arts center a reality when it voted at its Aug. 20 meeting to purchase several tracts of land downtown at a cost of $7.6 million.

    The purchase of the tracts covered several motions on the council's agenda, but each vote went the same way - 6-3 in favor, with council members Tony Wilkins, Mairkay Abuzuaiter, and Dianne Bellamy-Small voting "no."

    Indeed, a performing arts center has been an issue in Greensboro for some time now. The city has the 23,000-seat Greensboro Coliseum, which regularly has hosted the ACC basketball tournament and also draws big-name concert acts.

    But events attracting a smaller audience - Broadway shows, for example - are left to the adjacent War Memorial Auditorium. Now more than 50 years old, the venue has fallen into bad repair.

    Voters twice have rejected bond referendums to renovate War Memorial, leading city leaders to believe a better approach would be to start from scratch. As a result, War Memorial seems destined to become a parking lot that will generate revenues help pay for its successor.

    City officials estimate the $9,000 in annual savings by demolishing War Memorial - plus the revenue the premium parking will generate - will help cover an estimated $388,000 operating deficit.

    GPAC was pitched as a public-private partnership, with the city contributing $30 million using Guilford County hotel-motel tax funds.

    Earlier, the Republican-majority Guilford County Board of Commissioners voted 7-2 to approve the use of hotel-motel tax funds for the performing arts center.

    As for private donations, the original goal was $20 million, raised by the nonprofit Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro. The Community Foundation has met that goal, but now the bar has been raised to $30 million, as stated in a memo from Greensboro City Manager Denise Turner Roth.

    During the meeting, Wilkins repeatedly raised the issue of the $10 million shortfall. Wilkins also made a motion that the council pass a resolution stating that no property tax dollars would be used to fund GPAC. The motion died for lack of a second.

    "You know why we won't assure taxpayers that we're not going to use their money - it's because we know we are," Wilkins told Carolina Journal.

    The way Wilkins sees it, the city is "putting the cart before the horse" by purchasing land when there's still a funding deficit.

    "How do we as a council - supposedly good stewards of taxpayers' money - spend $8 million [on land] when there's a $10 million gap in the project?" Wilkins said. "It doesn't make sense to me."

    Wilkins contends the $7.6 million figure to purchase the land is not accurate, given that the city might have to buy out the leases of current tenants.

    "It may be an insignificant number, or it may be a larger number," Wilkins said.

    Fellow council member Nancy Vaughan, a GPAC supporter, disputes that view, adding if anything the leases will offset the cost of the land.

    "If we own those properties, then we start getting those lease payments," Vaughan told CJ.

    Vaughan added that she's confident the private sector will come up with the additional $10 million.

    "I think we will have that question resolved by late September," she said. "So, yeah, I'm pretty confident additional funds will come in."

    The questions still did not deter the performing arts center's proponents, especially Mayor Robbie Perkins, who is facing a challenge from fellow council member Vaughan in the upcoming municipal election.

    Perkins has taken a lot of heat in recent months for his personal and financial problems - he filed for bankruptcy earlier this year and has been taken to court by his ex-wife over alimony and child support payments.

    Perkins said that as mayor he's taken a lot "dings" this year, but it did not deter his support for the performing arts center.

    "Why do we do this?" he asked. "Because we can change the city."