Winston-Salem is trying to pin down what kind of guarantee it will get from Billy Prim if the downtown stadium project doesn’t quite work out as planned:
Although council members are fairly comfortable with Prim’s ability to carry off the project, they wanted to know last week whether he is putting up some form of performance bond, a type of insurance policy that can protect the city by paying a certain amount of money in case the project does not perform as expected.
Prim is not offering that.
“What do you mean how are we guaranteeing it? We are guaranteeing it,” Prim said.
The ticket surcharges will provide at least a temporary spike as fans flock to the new stadium. More problematic for the city will be recouping the $8 million in grants if Prim and his partners can’t pay the expected property taxes because the project didn’t quite work out as expected.
I really hate to be a naysayer, but I seriously doubt this project will work out as expected. We here in Greensboro need only to look at the vacant lot on the corner of Smith and Eugene, right in the shadow of First Horizon Park, to see that things don’t always work out the way developers want them to.
