A sleeping giant woke up today and smelled the coffee.
Mark Holmberg of the Richmond Times-Dispatch finally weighs in on the real reasons why we’ve got a “Hole in the Ground” in downtown Richmond, drawing necessary comparisons to how Nashville successfully built its recently-constructed Schermerhorn Symphony Center (described as “a palace” by one national arts writer). Bill Pantele, John Bates, Ellen Robertson, Kathy Graziano and other Virginia Performing Arts Foundation sycophants and enablers will probably not appreciate Slim’s conclusions, which sound remarkably like things we’ve been writing about at Save Richmond for more than three years. (But who’s carping?)
Of course, the Times-Dispatch’s intellectually-dishonest editorial page is still beating the VAPAF’s drum (witness today’s grumpy pictorial counterpoint to Holmberg’s column). The ed page’s Ross “Doug Did It!” Mackenzie and Barton Hinkle have been touting Nashville’s successful campaign for some time now, all without informing the public of the considerable differences between the approaches of the two projects — or even reminding that a recent junket that city leaders and Richmond power-brokers took to Music City did not include a visit to, or a careful study of, Nashville’s inclusive and fiscally-responsible hall.
Some prime excerpts are below. (I never thought we’d say it — but Go! Holmberg Go!) Emphasis mine:
Nashville’s plan for symphony hit right notes
MARK HOLMBERG
TIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST
Sep 24, 2006Music City has a new and acclaimed symphony center, a $123 million crown jewel that nicely reflects this town’s vision and momentum.
Richmond has a hole in the ground.
Compared with the political and social fisticuffs that KO’d Richmond’s Performing Arts Center, the genesis of the Schermerhorn Symphony Center was a love fest. But not a cinch. “People laughed at us - like that’s going to happen,” recalled Nashville Symphony President and CEO Alan Valentine shortly before Thursday night’s Symphony Pops show celebrating the life of Ray Charles.
This affable, blue-eyed San Antonio native in a well-cut pinstripe suit was one of the keys to the center’s development. Valentine worked his way up from a $3.50-an-hour job managing the University of Houston orchestra, which is why his office will be the last in the new building to have a desk. He sleeps four hours a night and seems to be in constant motion. He’s smooth around millionaires but just as gracious to first-time symphony attendees.
Inside the vast neoclassical center, in one of the plush founders boxes, sits Martha Ingram, another prime key that unlocked the center. One of the richest women in the world, Ingram is known here for her humility, grace and unfailing support of the arts, which is why she’s the grand dame of Nashville.
Her charitable fund kicked in $30 million. She probably could have written a check for the whole thing, Valentine explains, “but she knew if she did it, no one would come.”
Nashville residents had to feel ownership, [Valentine] says.
It’s the [Nashville] symphony’s center. The city contributed the $10 million parcel of land and an additional $5 million or so in cash and improvements to the block. The investment is already paying off for the city, as the symphony center has helped fuel revitalization in the somewhat scruffy SoBro (South of Broadway) neighborhood. Two high-rise condos as well as a hotel are going up.
“We weren’t dependent on the city,” explains Wilson Ochoa, the symphony’s chief librarian.
Jennifer Goldberg, the assistant librarian for the Nashville Symphony was, until recently, the librarian for the Richmond Symphony. She says Richmond’s multipurpose design was flawed, even before Mayor L. Douglas Wilder started sniping at it.
The difference between what Richmond failed to do and what Nashville accomplished is simply amazing, she says as she gathers the night’s sheet music.
Recapping: Nashville had a strong, smooth symphony president, a much-admired fundraising leader and a driven, charismatic symphony director for its private project. And yes, there’s a lot of money in this town.
Richmond’s Performing Arts Foundation had as its frontman the not-quite-smooth Brad Armstrong, who was no match for the cantankerous Wilder. It was a public-private endeavor in a city with pressing social problems and large pockets of poverty. Nashville’s elite paid up. Richmond’s did not meet Wilder’s challenge to foot the bill.
That’s why Nashville has a world-class symphony center and Richmond has a hole in the ground.