Here is just a weird story. This is the headline in today’s Uptown paper of record “With no buyers, preschoolers’ museum closes.” Then Michelle Crouch goes on to report:
“We tried to find someone to buy it, and that fell through last week,” executive director Lisa Shporer said Wednesday as she sold the museum’s last toys and tables.
“The family that owns it lost $725,000. They could no longer meet their financial obligations.”
She declined to name the owners of the for-profit museum.
Really? Michelle Crouch named them in a December 2005 story on the museum. She interviewed them:
A Charlotte couple is planning to launch the city’s first children’s museum next spring in south Charlotte.
Robyn and Pressley Ridgill hatched the idea after taking their children to museums in other cities and getting frustrated that Charlotte had nothing similar.
While Discovery Place has some exhibits for young children, it’s a science museum that serves mostly school-aged children.
“We wanted something that would serve children under 6,” said Robyn Ridgill, who has two young boys, 1 and 4.
The $500,000 museum, called Children at Play, will be housed in a 10,000-square-foot former Goodwill store near Park Road.
State records confirm that Pressley Ridgill was still listing himself as president of Communities at Play in filings made at the end of March. Further, back in 2005 Crouch reported that the business was launched not with family funds, but “with a federal small business loan.”
This immediately calls into question the notion that the museum owners directly lost $725K. Someone may have lost that amount, including taxpayers. Moreover, from county property records it appears the Ridgills decamped to South Carolina in April 2007, selling a home on Dovefield Road for $265K and retiring a $208K note in the process. The Fort Mill address listed as the business office for Communities at Play is a home on a cul-de-sac just across the state line currently selling for $329K, down from a July listing price of $339K.
