You’ve read an awful lot about it…
The Performing Arts Center was planned, funded, and supported by a grassroots group of people who care about Richmond — people who want the city to be more than it is… Now we are forced to sit on the sidelines while we watch Wilder and Goldman dismantle all the work that was done.
The “In-People” just couldn’t stop talking about it for the longest time…
“If we just let them try to raise the money, they can raise the money.”
Those with a “dog in the hunt” — or a bigwig contributor or two on the board — were rewarded with ample space to expound upon it:
“What else would it be with Doug Wilder?” asked Thomas Shields, director of the Center for Leadership in Education at the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond.
“He wanted to establish himself in the bounds of his office. He wanted to fight with somebody, and this was the perfect fight.” The arts foundation and its leaders were “sitting ducks,” Shields said, because their project relied on city support. City Council committed $27.8 million to the arts center in 2003 when it increased the meals tax from 5 percent to 6 percent.
Shields said that Wilder, by halting payments and declaring the deal on the arts center dead, was able to squelch fundraising and then complain about a lack of progress…
Perhaps, after all of that expert commentary, you even believe it.
The mayor continues to express concerns about the proposed performing arts center. It is clear to those close to the project that he doesn’t fully understand the project, its genesis or its long-range goals.
Yes, it’s a Myth of the Performing Arts Center — an accepted-as-”fact” narrative with details about Richmond’s messiest white elephant and its complicated, sordid history that would seem to totally contradict what is actually in the public record. Since “Sunshine Week” is here, it might a good time to go back and soak up some of those truth rays still being blocked and/or reflected away. In other words, those of you who still think the blame for the huge hole on Broad and a boarded-up Carpenter Center belongs anywhere but on the door steps of the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation and Richmond City Council need to finally sit down and read all of the financial documents, bank statements and assorted inter-office memoranda we uncovered some months ago.
[In the case of this particular howler, you don't even have to do that if you don't wanna. Just a short trip through the ol' press clips will solve the mystery.]
This week’s myth: Mayor Doug Wilder is and was somehow responsible for the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation’s poor private fundraising… and that the Foundation was somehow doing just fine until he came along.
Travel back one year ago, to March 2005 and those innocent and carefree days BEFORE the villainous L. Douglas Wilder entered the picture and ruined the good times. Only thing is: Times weren’t that good. On March 3rd, the Foundation admitted to the Times-Dispatch (in an article that the paper would seemingly lose and never refer to again) that it could not meet its fundraising goals. At that point, the Foundation’s failure to find money was (according to them) the fault of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Mayor Wilder was not mentioned:
Plans to open a performing-arts center in downtown Richmond in 2007 probably would be delayed if the project doesn’t get more than the $5 million offered by the state Senate, the project’s top official said yesterday. “At a $5 million level, I doubt we’ll be able to stay on that schedule,” said Brad Armstrong, president of the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation.
Before that, it was the tragedy of 9/11 that was to blame for the VAPAF’s private fundraising travails. At least that’s how Chief VAPAF apologist and downtown white elephant enabler Ross Mackenzie saw things on Feb. 16, one month before the state was blamed:
[T]he bitter fact of the matter is that this endeavor launched in one of the worst climates for charitable giving ever. Richmond-area donors have been magnanimous — the Robins Foundation, for instance, gave $5 million last year — but no one, understandably, wants to throw money at a doomed enterprise; lackluster funding could become a self-reinforcing pattern.
Ross would tell yet another story about the “doomed” venture later in the year — this time, there would be an added twist [emphasis mine]:
Richmond’s anticipated performing arts center has followed a path to nowhere. What has held center stage is a tragicomedy with no discernible plot. Good people were tracking toward good results. Then issues arose with the new city administration over e.g. public funds, ownership of the site, building permits, personalities, and who should — or shouldn’t — be talking to whom.
Uh-huh. Of course, the very astute Mackenzie never explains how a mayor in office only a few short months could put the ka-bosh on more than three years of prior fundraising efforts. [ The truth on all of that can actually be found here. ] But who gave Mackenzie the idea to start shifting the blame? Clues can be found in an April 2 T-D article, which details the mayor’s first initial queries about the Foundation’s finances. He sent a letter to CEO Brad Armstrong and the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation — with simple questions. Like how much money do you really have and how much is this really going to cost? Those kinds of questions.
The PAC didn’t respond for nearly a month, blaming the silence on “a lack of communication.” When Brad Armstrong finally got back to the mayor with a written response to his query, he didn’t just suggest that the new mayor permanently waive the Foundation’s approaching fundraising deadline — the deadline that held the PAC’s “feet to the fire,” remember? — he began laying the groundwork for the blame game [emphasis mine]:
Armstrong also tells Wilder that with “your personal involvement and support” the foundation expects to have the $93 million raised by Dec. 31, 2006. “Several important donors will not currently commit because of the perceived uncertainty of the city’s support for this project,” Armstrong said.
So here it is, folks — just a few months into Wilder’s term, and after one month of stonewalling by the Foundation, the place where the “myth” first drew breath.
“My personal involvement?” he said incredulously, of Armstrong’s suggestion that the mayor help with fundraising.
Wilder also reacted skeptically to other details, some of which have been previously questioned by critics of the project. For example, he wondered how the foundation could report having raised $67.7 million for construction when the total includes $15.8 million in city funds that will apparently be lost if the July 1 deadline is enforced.
He also questioned whether the foundation could realistically expect to raise $12 million from Richmond-area localities when the current proposal — an increase in local-lodging taxes — has been opposed by him and officials in Chesterfield County.
If this crawl through the public record doesn’t convince that we all swallow pure hogwash whenever the “Doug Did It!” excuse is cited, check the Save Richmond archive. Months before the new mayor took office, we were warning on this very website that the Foundation’s uncertain finances and wasteful spending could bankrupt the Carpenter and leave the city with a big hole it couldn’t fill. If a buncha freelancing rubes like us could see a looming iceberg on the horizon, I daresay a man like Doug Wilder can recognize the obvious too.
Yes, the roots of many fanciful urban myths are murky, their origins hard to trace. But “Doug Did It!” is relatively easy to pin down — Richmond finger-pointers can map this particular piece of lively propaganda back to its original sources: Brad Armstrong of the VAPAF and Ross Mackenzie of the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Next time: Myth #2— Osama was to Blame!