N&R’s advice to boosters of a proposed downtown performing arts center:
Don’t oversell this worthy project. Come clean with voters on direct benefits versus indirect ones, and on possible negatives. For instance, even as the Greensboro Aquatics Center has surpassed all expectations in its first year, it still would receive $400,000 in additional taxpayer money for operations in the proposed city budget. And the ACC Hall of Champions hasn’t come anywhere near projected attendance or economic benefits.
Keep your predictions as conservative as possible. Remind taxpayers that the facility’s success should not be judged solely by its bottom-line revenues, but by its broader cultural, social and economic impact as well.
In short, under-promise. Then over-deliver.
Far as I can tell, the exact opposite — over-promising and under-delivering —- is pretty much standard operating procedure, as evidenced by the two examples the editorial cites.
