Maybe I’ve been just been doing this too long, but I see some angling going on.
The Rhino’s Paul Clark follows up on Guilford County school board member Ed Price’s pitch to the City Council for a downtown skateboard park.
Just so happens that price is bundling his skateboard project with the proposed amphitheater pitched by HP architect Peter Freeman.
Money is an issue, but still dangling is $1.9 million in two-thirds bonds the city took out to finish the last mile of its greenway. The bonds have to be used for parks and rec, and an amphitheater doesn’t legally fit under that category. But an amphitheater combined with a skateboard park —a regional recreation complex, if you will —– just might.
As Clark notes, Price has the ability to raise private funds. But there’s a catch:
That’s where Price, who owns Ed Price and Associates, High Point’s largest real estate firm, differs from any random citizen coming in and asking the City Council to build something: He has a proven ability to attract private donations. In the case of the Miracle Field, High Point bought the land from the Guilford County Board of Education and Price raised $500,000 from private donors to build the field.
Price said he was told he would never get the money to build Miracle Field – but that the athletic complex has now reached such a critical mass that the school board is spending a further $2 million on it, and the City of High Point a further $1.2 million.
So here’s what I see happening —– the council taps the bonds, Price makes up the difference, and voila taxpayers have themselves a regional recreation complex.
