The costs of supporting the taxpayer-funded Greensboro Coliseum are now spread throughout the state of North Carolina.
The Greensboro City Council, at the request of coliseum director Matt Brown, recently released $2 million in state funds to begin the first phase of a proposed Atlantic Coast Conference Hall of Champions.
Brown unveiled his plan before the council during a recent meeting, making sure to emphasize Greensboro’s strong relationship with the ACC. The conference headquarters is in Greensboro, and the coliseum will host the ACC men’s basketball tournament five of the next six years and the women’s basketball tournament the next six years.
Brown added that the Hall of Champions would only “cement” that relationship with the conference and would considerably enhance the tournament’s $20 million local economic impact.
“I think this is going to be a significant opportunity for this city to create a true local, statewide, and even a national tourist destination, and it should be funded through continued support from the state,” Brown said.
Brown assured council members that the hall would be funded entirely with state money, alleviating the need to come to the city for additional funding. While Brown praised Guilford County Democratic Sens. Don Vaughan and Katie Dorsett for helping secure the $2 million in funding, it certainly didn’t meet the full $20 million funding request for the hall. So it will have to be built in phases as more state funding becomes available.
While Brown hopes the hall will eventually grow to 35,000 square feet — using space in the coliseum’s Special Events Center — the initial phase would be approximately 8,100 square feet.
But Brown has ambitious plans for that space, including a theatre, a timeline, and 7,000 square feet of exhibit space. Brown said some artifacts already have been donated, including ACC championship trophies donated by legendary University of North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith.
Brown insisted that the coliseum would not pay for artifacts, adding that the ACC is not asking for a licensing fee.
Brown notes that other cities had offered generous deals to sports organizations for free office and exhibit space. He also mentioned Charlotte, which outbid Atlanta and Daytona Beach, Fla., for the right to build the $150 million NASCAR Hall of Fame.
The proposed Hall of Champions is but one part of development proposals surrounding the coliseum, which has come under fire from the public because it has required continual subsidies from taxpayers to fund its ongoing operations.
Fueling that fire may be the fact that Brown is the City of Greensboro’s highest-paid employee, earning more than interim City Manager Bob Morgan.
Moreover, in last November’s election, voters rejected a $50 million bond referendum to fund major renovations to War Memorial Auditorium, the 2,400-seat venue that sits next to the coliseum.
Even after the defeat, Brown said he would continue to seek funding to renovate the deteriorating auditorium. The council added the auditorium to its “wish list” for money from the federal economic stimulus package, and Brown has also indicated that he plans to come back to voters with a smaller bond package — perhaps $35 million — in the hope that the lesser amount could pay for basic renovations.
Even though voters rejected the auditorium’s renovation plan, they may have at the same time unwittingly handed Brown more authority by passing a $20 million parks and recreation bond that included $12 million for a new aquatic center. The center would serve as a competitive facility designed to attract swimming tournaments from around the region.
After the bond passed, some City Council members publicly stated that the coliseum area would be the best location for the aquatic center. Not only is it convenient for visitors, they argued, but it also could be a focus of the city’s effort to revitalize the Lee Street/High Point Road corridor, a major artery that has fallen into disrepair in recent years.
After the council voted 9-0 to release state funding for the Hall of Champions, it began an extended debate on the location of the aquatic center. Council members Mike Barber, Robbie Perkins, and Trudy Wade expressed their desire to place construction of the aquatic center under the authority of the War Memorial Commission, which oversees the coliseum complex.
“I’ll just say it — there’s only one location in Greensboro that makes this thing work, and that’s at the coliseum,” Perkins said during the council’s discussion. “It works because of the hotels down the street, because of the restaurants down the street, and because of our vision for revitalizing the High Point Road corridor.”
But council members Dianne Bellamy-Small and Goldie Wells expressed concern that the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission wouldn’t have an adequate role in the aquatic center. “Since that was parks and rec bond money, then they [Parks and Recreation] need to be at the table,” Bellamy-Small said.
Perkins then expressed his frustration with Parks and Recreation, saying it had consistently “torpedoed” the project for years.
“I hate to have to say that, but there’s an inherent conflict between a competitive regional swim facility and a parks and rec facility,” Perkins said. “If you’re going to get the project going, you need to have a driver to do it. There needs to be input from parks and rec, but they don’t need to be the driver, in my opinion. I think that would slow the process down.”
Barber emphasized the need to get the project underway minus the usual bureaucratic red tape.
“I wince and shudder when I hear we need a committee that’s going to take six months to decide we need a swimming pool,” Barber said. “That’s not the way we should do business.”
In the end, the council reached a compromise when it gave responsibility for construction of the aquatic center to the War Memorial Commission — along with representatives from the Parks and Recreation Commission and the city manager’s office. Additional oversight will be provided by a council advisory committee.
Sam A. Hieb is a contributor to Carolina Journal.