Thursday, February 2, 2012

The Hotel Myth

Proponents of a downtown performing arts center will tell you that by building the PAC downtown, those who attend shows will stay in our downtown "luxury hotels" but the same thing was said about the downtown Greensboro Civil Rights Museum. Only, it didn't work out that way.

"If 83% of the Civil Rights Museum’s visitors probably won’t stay at a luxury Hotel in downtown Greensboro, why has almost every press release and news story about the proposed hotel mentioned its proximity to the museum?"

Good question, George. And then there's that thing about Commissioner Skip Alston owning an interest in a proposed downtown hotel project. Is Skip also a proponent of a downtown PAC? Sorry, I have to ask being that the proposed site of the East Greensboro Performing Arts Center is slap dab in the middle of Skip's district.

Look, I can't begin to speculate how many people might attend shows at the proposed Randall Jarrell Performing Arts Center in East Greensboro but sadly, you can almost bet that many of them have no recollection of The Greensboro 4, thus insuring better attendance for the PAC than Civil Rights Museum.

And then there's that thing about the children which, by the way, I covered earlier.

I hope the Greensboro Civil Rights Museum does well but seriously, the people of East Greensboro-- those most likely to be interested in civil rights-- got the short end of the stick from the beginning. It's time we got our share.

Continue to article #19 SS Different Project