I’m still waiting to read something — anything — in our local paper of record about the proposed $50 million bond to “renovate” War Memorial Auditorium. My guess is the N&R’s city beat reporter, not being from around here, just doesn’t realize that anything having to do with the Greensboro Coliseum is a touchy subject with taxpayers. Maybe somebody should tell her. Maybe she’s waiting for the City Council’s Tuesday briefing session for more details. I don’t know.
At any rate, the Rhino’s John Hammer says what I said earlier in the week —- how can you spend $50 million on that place without tearing it down and rebuilding?
The story is this is a renovation but looking at the plans it appears it might better be described as a teardown and rebuilding on the same site. This has been put on the ballot before and failed. According to (City Manager Mitchell) Johnson, the acoustics and the whole layout of the auditorium is bad. But woudn’tit be interesting if the people of Greensboro were given an opportunity to vote on a renovation instead of a complete rebuild? Or another interesting idea would be paying for the renovation of the auditorium with some of the $178 million that the city still has in the bank, not with bonds.
I guess this puts plans for a new downtown performance center on hold.
