The fate of Spirit Square should not be confused with the fate of the performing arts in Charlotte, except for the nagging feeling that many of players in this drama have never finished the script. Unless there is a sudden new development late in the story, the Charlotte arts scene will take a massive hit.
The first clue that something funky is afoot is the attempt to deny the obvious. The Spirit Square sale is all about making the numbers work for a $35 million Uptown baseball stadium. Why Mecklenburg County Commissioner Dumont Clarke denies this is a mystery, but so is most of what Clarke says.
Maybe, must maybe, Clarke is referring to the fact that Uptown baseball is part of larger Center City Partner plan to remake Uptown, much of which hinged on getting the Wachovia Arts Tower built. Without the Arts Tower in hand, we would not be talking about getting rid of Spirit Square.
Here’s where things break down. The Arts Tower is not a one-for-one replacement for Spirit Square. County officials do not seem to understand that. Spirit Square’s funky little spaces for community arts groups are not part of the grand Arts Tower plan. This has been obvious since the outset, but somehow this crucial fact keeps getting overlooked.
Now, is this on purpose? Some think so. Some think the grand plan is to banish community theater, for example, from Uptown.
Uptown will be reserved for professional, touring theater, able to afford to pay union scale and high rents for the new spaces. Recall that funds to keep the spaces open will be dear. In fact, if you think of Spirit Square and community, “fringe” theater as competitors of the new spaces and professional, “mainsteam” offerings those spaces will host, things start to make some harsh sense.
It certainly looks like Charlotte rushed to build performing arts spaces that it could not afford, heedless of what that would mean for existing spaces and the performers who use them.
