Pretty incredible debate during last night’s Greensboro City Council meeting that hopefully the N&R will pick up on. Surely the Rhino will have something tomorrow.
Triad Watch warned us to look at the consent agenda and note that coliseum director Matt Brown “is having a change in budget.”
Sure enough, Item 19 on the consent agenda was a change order for $35,000 for ‘coliseum complex Canada Dry site work.’
Remember a few months back how the City Council was surprised to hear that construction of an amphitheater on the Canada Dry site has already begun:
When the Greensboro City Council heard this week that a $95,000 amphitheater was under construction at the Greensboro Coliseum, some council members said they didn’t know about the project.
The work has been stopped until they learn more.
“It caught some people on their heels,” Councilman Zack Matheny said Wednesday, a day after the issue came up in a work session.
Note the lede — ‘construction on a $95,000 amphitheater.’ Now $130,000 has already spent, and when council member Robbie Perkins asked Brown point blank how much more money he needed to finish the job, Brown said $350,000, more than half of which would be so-called sponsorship dollars. So that brings the total to $480,000, which means you can go ahead and count on at least half a million.
Perkins made sure to emphasize the fact that revenue from the amphitheater — if it was completed in time for the summer-fall concert season, would help offset coliseum’s budget gap.
