Civic Arts Center plan dissolves
Good:
The Blount County Commission on Thursday night voted not to fund its $11.9 million portion of a proposed $55 million Civic Arts Center at Maryville College.
Because the measure needed 11 votes to pass, and 10 commissioners voted for the measure and 10 voted against it, the four hour commission meeting ended with Civic Arts Center proponents going home disappointed. The number of proponents in the commission room out-numbered those against funding the center by more than a three-to-one margin.
More than 200 people were crowded into every seat and along each wall of the commission room.
Good for the county. This was interesting:
In many cases Civic Arts Center supporters stressed economic, educational and cultural opportunities the facility would bring. Civic Arts Center opponents pointed to economic and education priorities for not funding the facility. Still others said they supported the facility, but not the public funding.
The meeting was not without at least one surprise when commissioner Joe Everett voiced his support for the project after initially speaking against the funding two years ago. He said that information about attracting business and industry were his reasons for supporting the plan.
Well, if it’s to be so profitable and all that, why not get some private investors to foot the bill? And, at least one commissioner, agreed with me:
Commissioner David Graham spoke against the funding while acknowledging the civic center was a good idea. “It’s hard for me to support funding the civic arts center when we’re not anywhere near solving the overcrowding problem (in the schools),” Graham said.
November 18th, 2005 at 11:05 am
I concur it would be good for BC but my concern is the cash is otherwise better spent on schools, roads, or, hell, just given back to the tax payer. If it’s such a wonderful thing, then surely they can get these local GOBs to pony up the remaining $12M since they’re already in it for $20M? And there’s also the issue that the counties and cities fund the bulk of it and then turn it over to the college?
IIRC, wasn’t the $20M in private funds coming via Maryville College?
November 21st, 2005 at 5:39 pm
Damnedest thing, WP keeps eating the comment and it keeps re-appearing. Odd. RNeal said:
This is sad. I was sort of ambivelent at first but mostly for it, and now that it was voted down I realize I was more for it than I though.
There was a great full page ad in yesterday’s Maryville Daily Times with a letter from all the local big-wig businesses, including Beale at Ruby Tuesday, Clayton at Clayton, West at West Chevrolet, etc. They strongly recommended the project and gave very good reasons. (Conventions or attracting business was not one of them, although they and others have said and I agree that professionals and the upscale demographic we’d like to have in Blount County will be more attracted and more likely to stay in Blount County with amenties such as this.)
As for private funding, there was $20 million in private donatations on the table. I’m guessing that a lot of it came from the people who signed the open letter. According to the paper, Clayton said at the meeting last night that $15 million of it was now off the table, because those pledges were for a public facility, not a new Maryville College auditorium.
So, the City of Maryville approved it, the City of Alcoa approved it, every major business leader in the community supported it (some probably with hard cash in large sums), newspaper editorials supported it, and there was widespread support among the community for it. But the County Commission decided to leave Blount County sucking the hind tit of Knoxville (and a pretty dry one at that) in terms of art and culture. Nice progressive move.
At least my commissioner voted for it. I’ll remember that come election time.