An old song comes to mind...
Many have already dismissed my idea to bring The Randall Jarrell Performing Arts Center to East Greensboro. They'll tell you I'm a fool to try, an insane wacko seeking publicity, a struggling half-baked, brain dead author trying to sell a few books... There's really no telling what they might say about me.
But what they say about me doesn't matter. What matters is that the Greensboro City Council, under the leadership of Mayor Robbie Perkins, secretly met and has taken it on their own to rush a "bungled plan" to spend $72 Million Dollars of someone else's money on a performing arts center without ever stopping to consider that downtown Greensboro and the Greensboro Coliseum Complex are not the only two locations in this town that might be supportive of such a project in their neighborhood. They haven't even looked at any other sites.
Then there's the rumor that the Greensboro News & Record is about to close its doors and desperately needs a buyer for the downtown city block on which the newspaper company sets. Does $20 Million sound about right for the N&R property? But hey, it's only a rumor, right?
No, what they say about me doesn't matter because if I lose and the performing arts center is built without at least considering the site I've chosen along with other sites in other neighborhoods throughout Greensboro then they have proven me right when I said, "...if Greensboro's better-off population is so snobbish, classist and racist as to refuse to patronize an East Greensboro Performing Arts Center then none of Greensboro deserves to have a performing arts center no matter where they ultimately decide to locate it."
After all, if this is really about economic impact then the poorest neighborhoods in Greensboro should be the first neighborhoods chosen. And downtown is far from the poorest neighborhood in Greensboro.
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