In the 1990s, Cumberland County joined many other communities in building a new sports and entertainment arena. While the Crown Coliseum is a state-of-the-art facility, one thing has been lacking: enough events drawing enough people for the building to break even.

In 2000, the county signed a deal with Arena Ventures, a partnership between Clear Channel Entertainment and National Basketball association’s Development League, to generate more business for the arena. Unfortunately, the county so far has lost a substantial amount of money on the arrangement and is unlikely to cover its costs over the contract’s five-year span.

Arena Ventures brought the Fayetteville Patriots, one of eight teams in the NBADL, to town in 2001. Average attendance last season was only 1,626 per game. The arena made $3,059 from the team in the 2002-03 season, after a $29,149 loss the previous season. The league’s future is uncertain after the upcoming season.

Under the agreement, Clear Channel Entertainment was also supposed to bring an additional number of events to the coliseum. In the past two years, it has met only half its contractual agreement and has paid penalties to the county.

In exchange for the additional business, Cumberland County paid Arena Ventures substantial management fees and entered into a licensing arrangement. The expectation on the county’s part was that additional bookings and revenues from Clear Channel selling naming right to the Crown would more than offset the additional costs. The contract has since been renegotiated and most county payments end at the end of this year.

The Fayetteville Observer estimates that through August, the county spent $748,471 on management and licensing agreements and has recovered only $201,209 from events associated with Arena Ventures.

“That was just a bad deal that didn’t work, but there’s no sense in turning [Clear Channel] down if they bring in a few shows that are good revenue producers,” Civic Center Commission member Henry Holt told the newspaper.

The Crown Coliseum opened in October 1997. It seats 8,145 for basketball.

Triangle transit consolidation?

Local governments in Wake, Durham, and Orange counties are exploring the possibility of merging their separate transit systems into a single, Triangle-wide operation.

Under an outline developed by the Triangle J Council of Governments, the six existing bus systems would likely be combined, with routes coordinated across the region and eventually linked to a light-rail line to be built between the Research Triangle park, Durham, and Raleigh.

“We went into this study anticipating there would be ways to improve service, and I think this study demonstrates this is one way to do that,” Chapel Hill Mayor Kevin Foy told the Durham Herald-Sun.
How a combined transit system would work in practice remains to be worked out, especially given that different cities subsidize transit to differing degrees.

Funding would in part come from a proposed, dedicated, Triangle-wide tax to fund transit.

Elevated fire stations costs

The Winston-Salem City Council has approved a revised budget for a new fire station on Somerset Drive. While a failure to account for the topography of the site was largely responsible for the station costing 50 percent more than originally projected, state disability rules also played a role in the cost overrun.

Among the changes the city was forced to make was to include an elevator. North Carolina’s interpretation of the Americans with Disabilities Act is that the device is required in two-story public buildings, including fire houses. The city was unable to persuade officials with the Department of Insurance that the elevator would be unnecessary.

Winston-Salem noted that the second floor was not a public part of the building and that it did not plan to assign disabled firefighters to the fire station.

“This is a classic example of state government doing something it knows nothing about and causing us financial grief,” Council Member Vernon Robinson told the Winston-Salem Journal.

The elevator will add $35,000 to the cost of the fire station.

Charlotte rezones

After an embarrassing — and costly —snafu involving the siting of an asphalt factory in a fragile neighborhood in contradiction of a land-use plan, the city of Charlotte is proposing the rezoning of about 550 acres of land.

Over the past three years, the city has developed detailed neighborhood plans for parts of the city. To ensure that they are implemented, the city wants to rezone large amounts of land in seven areas.

“This is going to be extremely contentious and controversial,” Assistant Planning Director Debra Campbell told The Charlotte Observer. “But we believe we are doing the right thing.”

The opposition would come from many of the effected property owners. Restrictions on future use would tend to reduce the value of their property. Current businesses would be grandfathered in, but they might not be able to expand.

Charlotte’s move comes after a well-publicized case of zoning not reflecting a new neighborhood plan. Earlier this year, Ferebee Corp. announced plans to build an asphalt plant on a three-acre site near the Optimist Park neighbor. The city council had approved a neighborhood plan that envisioned homes, offices, and shops being built on the site. The actual zoning of the tract, however, was never changed and still allowed an industrial usage, so Charlotte could not legally stop the plant.

The city ended up paying the company nearly $800,000 to build the plant on a different site.

Lowrey is associate editor at Carolina Journal.