"Martinet Perkins and Matt Brown may not have noticed it, but Greensboro is dying. This is pretty remarkable because Perkins happens to own the largest commercial real estate company in the city. And yet, our shopping centers continue to languish without tenants and our citizens without jobs. One day that captured whore of the local oligarchy, the N&R, tells us how the PTP is gonna spend $30M on business parks and the next how they’re gonna get $30M in bonds approved for a PAC.
No, huh uh, wrong. Not until the needs of our existing neighborhoods have been addressed. Of course, the country club set can pony up the dough for a PAC to assuage their DPAC envy if they want. After all, it’s a free country. But until certain commitments are kept, such as previously approved bonds and a solution to our waste management problems, Robbie and Matt can go fuck themselves."
Sorry about Jeff's use of the F-word. Sometimes s%$t happens. Entrenched downtown boosters, 99 Blocks writes,
"With city leaders hastily planning a performing arts center for downtown, one of their challenges is to convince the community that it’s worth spending $30 million of the public’s money to build it."
And as if 99 Blocks is trying to prove me right when I say no downtown location is big enough.
"Though originally built for symphonies, operas and the ballet, to survive they now have had to evolve into buildings that are many things to many different people.
The Sidney Opera House in Australia, for instance, has more than 6 million people attending annually, yet only slightly more than 1 million of those are actually attending performances. They have to be built for different kinds of social and cultural events, including large Broadway productions. "You have to be entangled in the community," he said."
And finally, in his article, videri quam esse, local ombudsman, Roch Smith writes,
"It's Greensboro's motto, a flip of our state motto: To seem, rather than to be.
99 Blocks Magazine reports that the Performing Arts Center Task Force isn't waiting for the findings of its Feasibility Committee—the hired consultant for which has already concluded that it is his job to "plan a new arts facility in Greensboro in 80 days"—no, the "feasibility" was decided in advance and the task force is proceeding with putting the cart before the horse:"
Roch continues,
"Someday, maybe, we'll think enough or ourselves—of each other—to undertake deliberations of public projects like this without the pretense. Someday. Maybe. "
Don't hold your breath, Roch.
Once again, the local
Continue to article #58. Judge Henry Frye On Greensboro Performing Arts Center.
