N&R front-pager on the history of Project Haystack, the effort to transform the Guilford County prison farm into taxpayer-funded data center park.
Interesting the N&R —surely someone down there remembers— (the Rhino’s John Hammer sure did) — didn’t mention that consultant Mike Solomon was also a front on the effort to bring Major League Baseball (the Twins supposedly would bail out of Minneapolis) to Greensboro, an effort that “went down in flames when the tax to pay for the stadium went before voters,” a factoid that might call into question the N&R’s description of Solomon as a “hard-nosed realist.”
Sounds like it was real-hard nosed at last week’s presentation, when Solomon delivered the punchline. The Rhino’s Scott Yost reports:
One of the numbers – $88.1 million for infrastructure, jumped out – but there was also a total estimated cost of about $103 million when the $15 million land acquisition costs were figured in.
Donadio was the one who broke the news to the board that they would need to give the land away and pay all the money on top of that.
The commissioners, who were hearing the idea for the first time, literally had to fight back laughter, and most of them lost that fight and just started laughing out loud.
And still seven commissioners voted for the $30,000 feasibility study, including Jeff Phillips, who as Hammer also notes, “sold himself to voters as a Tea Party Republican.”
