Downtown Greensboro Inc. rehires Ed Wolverton:
Wolverton, the downtown development group’s first president a decade ago, will return Dec. 3 as president and chief executive officer of DGI. He replaces Ray Gibbs, who left in June after eight years on the job.
Wolverton, 47, is president of the Wichita Downtown Development Corp. in Wichita, Ks. He’ll resign that post Nov. 15 and return to a downtown Greensboro that is markedly different — in part, because of the planning he did during his tenure here in 1997 and ’98.
….While leading the Wichita group, Wolverton has worked with such projects as a $130 million public-private partnership to develop offices, apartments and retail downtown. He also has been involved in bringing citizen support to a planned $205 million downtown arena.
Red flag right there. Make that a $205 million taxpayer-supported arena, the price of which seems to keep going up. Here’s a little talk radio chatter just earlier this week:
It’s good news if you’re a backer of the downtown-Wichita arena: the 30-month, one-cent sales tax is generating more money than anticipated … forcing the Sedgwick County Commission by law to increase its budget for the project. The price tag is now 205-point-5 million dollars, an increase of nearly 21 million dollars over what voters approved three years ago. The actual cost of the arena has gone up because of the moving target of construction costs, which are rising constantly because of increasing world demand. It’s part of that global economy we hear about.
Karl Peterjohn of the Kansas Taxpayers Network has an alternative idea. He thinks the county should scrap the downtown arena, renovate the Kansas Coliseum, and refund the remainder of the budget … 100 million to 130 million dollars … in the form of property tax relief. On the other hand, Ed Wolverton of the Downtown Development Corporation say the anticipation of the new arena has boosted downtown investment by about 40 million dollars over the past couple years.
The curious world of the downtown-Wichita arena … in which the cost keeps going up for a building that hasn’t been started, in an overall project that is going to take five years to complete.
County Commissioners, the natives grow restless!
Just so you know.
