It’s time to revisit an old blogpost a local blogger made.
As shown above as #5 on this map from page 7 of the A&T PREEMINENCE 2020 plan for which the State of North Carolina approved $200,000 to be used for planning the new PAC in 2007. When did we first hear of Greensboro's PAC, 2011?
Why were we not told another PAC was being planned so close to Downtown?
That's a very good question. The 2000 Higher Education Bonds gave A&T the right to build its own PAC. Best case scenario, city leaders were extremely jealous of the university being funded to build its own performing arts center.
The first $98 million in bonds went on sale in November of 2015 and have an A+ rating. Has the City of Greensboro sold any bonds yet? And how will a second PAC so close by effect the bond rating of bonds issued by the City of Greensboro for a competitive project?
Leave it to Greensboro to royally botch something like this unless…
Now some may say this venue is only for NC A&T students but look at who performs at Carolina Performing Arts on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill.
And look at who performs roughly a mile west of the Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts at UNCG's Aycock Auditorium.
Not to mention Greensboro's other theater venues.
...you know, stuff…meanwhile, here’s a current picture of the site where the proposed A&T PAC was supposed to go.
The only logical conclusions that a person can reach are that:
1. The puppet masters who really run the city were truly that sinister in the sense that they didn’t want an HBCU providing world class entertainment while the War Memorial Auditorium was crumbling
2. If they wanted to, the Greensboro City Council would have found a way to fund the WMA after voters repeatedly rejected paying for repairs. Given that the Coliseum renovation went off the rails financially in the ‘90s, the public was weary of spending more money around that area. The fact that past City Councils were unable to convince the voters that the facility needed repairs is an indictment of those leaders
3. The fact that the General Assembly signed off on the A&T PAC showed that the state had faith in the university to develop it
4. The question then becomes how much did the city pay off A&T administrators in 2016 to make the Aggie PAC go away and line up behind the downtown performing arts center instead?
5. The elites’ envy over DPAC an hour to the east has helped to alter the arts scene in Greensboro—and not necessarily for the better given the high ticket prices once all of the fees for Tanger events have been factored in
6. Their scorn for A&T is consistent with the way they have treated other colleges and universities in the Gate City whereas Durham leaders actually support their universities and the DPAC has the strong backing of Duke University—how many students of any of Greensboro’s higher ed schools are hanging out at the Tanger Center on a regular basis?
