Well, it looks like the expensive branding consultants have been busy. Thanks to their feverish efforts — no doubt working late into the night and on weekends — Richmond’s controversial “Hole in the Ground” finally has an official name.
CenterStage.
Yep, identical to Baltimore’s performing arts center.
… and the same name as the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation’s old newsletter.
Quite a racket, that branding. Eh?
The Foundation (VAPAF) is currently claiming to have “raised” $45 million toward the opening of this CenterStage. Of course, most of this capital is public money they hope to obtain from Richmond city taxpayers while still retaining complete ownership of the Carpenter Center. On that score, the Foundation is so proud of its ongoing private fundraising effort that it refuses to disclose verifiable details about it. The last time VAPAF told the city to trust them and that everything was hunky-dory, Richmond found out, too late, that the group’s $68.8 million in claims turned out to be less than $1 million in reality.
So, for old times sake, you might want to have a pen handy when you read yesterday’s Times-Dispatch story on all of this. Feel free to write down the many questions that pop up in your head that are never addressed. And remember: it’s only millions in city tax dollars being wasted by a secretive, quasi-governmental entity that still doesn’t know what in the hell it is doing. That’s all. Don’t worry, be happy…
Excerpts below. Emphasis mine:
The planned arts center in downtown Richmond that once was touted as a statewide project now has a city-focused name.
The complex, which is being funded largely by city taxpayers, will be known as Richmond CenterStage.
It will include the Carpenter Center and several smaller venues, assuming that $9 million in private funds can be raised by the end of next month.
“Richmond is the center of the metropolitan area. This is for all of the metropolitan area, but it’s in the center city,” said Susan H. Fitz-Hugh, a member of the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation’s board of directors.
The complex had been tentatively called the Virginia Performing Arts Center, although project leaders had hoped to attract a private donation big enough to spur a name change. No such gift has yet materialized.
J. Robert Mooney, acting executive director of the arts foundation, said yesterday that the Richmond CenterStage name emerged after branding studies. CenterStage also was the name of the arts foundation’s old newsletter.
“We’re trying to be more geographically focused,” Mooney said.
The foundation also announced the names of two smaller venues at Richmond CenterStage. A 200-seat theater will be called the Libby Gottwald Community Playhouse in honor of the late Elisabeth Shelton Gottwald, a philanthropist and civic leader and the wife of Floyd Dewey Gottwald Jr., former chairman of the Ethyl and Albemarle corporations.
A multipurpose hall intended largely for local artists will be called Rhythm Hall. The hall, community playhouse and an arts-education center are planned for a home along East Grace Street in what is left of the former Thalhimers building, near Seventh Street.
So far, $11 million of the $20 million needed for those facilities has been raised from private donors, Mooney said. The foundation reports having raised the $45 million needed to renovate and expand the Carpenter Center.
The foundation announced three pledges totaling $2.5 million, but Mooney would not say which ones were recent. Dominion Resources Inc. promised $1.5 million, while Austin Ligon and an unnamed local foundation each committed $500,000.
The foundation has spent the past year working with a city committee to scale back the downtown project. The committee faces a Dec. 31 deadline to submit its final report to Mayor L. Douglas Wilder.
Construction is expected to start next year and finish by fall 2009.
W. Jerrold Samford, chairman of the Alliance for the Performing Arts, which represents about 30 local arts groups, said he believes the name Richmond CenterStage projects warmth and activity.
He acknowledged it could suggest an emphasis on professional theater that is not expected at the complex, but he noted that “lots of things are on stage, not just theater.”
Jean Boone, a member of the arts foundation board and the city’s arts committee, said she considers the name a little lackluster and noted there’s a CenterStage theater in Baltimore. “It’s not terribly original,” she said.
How’d you do?
Were these among the questions you jotted down?
1. Who did this study to rename the center, at what cost, and from what source was it paid (public or private funds)?
2. Do these branding experts see any confusion at all in potential patrons sorting out Carpenter Center vs. CenterStage?
3. Did the Commonwealth have an expectation that “Virginia” would be included as part of the name? Were state representatives consulted?
4. Can we assume from this story that no huge naming gift is expected… ever?
5. Can we assume from this story that, no matter what happens next month, the city will be funding this endeavor into perpetuity?
6. Does Richmond really intend on giving $25 million to the Foundation with no strings attached? Or are improvements to schools, sewers, jails, flood plans, etc. more important to fund at this time?
7. The Foundation has already wasted more than $7 million in tax dollars. What Richmond got in return was three years of high executive salaries, a slew of consultant expenses, a huge mudpit in the middle of downtown and a closed, boarded-up Carpenter Center. Will anyone involved with the Foundation ever be held accountable… or subject to serious oversight?
8. Does Jean Boone not realize that she has been a part of something called a “Performing Arts Committee” for more than a year and that she could’ve asked for public input into an “exciting” new name at any time?
9. If this complex will serve the entire metropolitan region, as the quoted VAPAF board member asserts, why is it not being regionally funded?
10. Is the mayor really going to stand for this?
UPDATE: Thanks to Richmond.com, we now know who is responsible for coming up with the brilliant name of “CenterStage.” A company called Brightmark can take the credit. They interviewed a whopping 90 Richmonders — I bet you can guess which ones — to justify their groundbreaking conclusion.
Emphasis mine:
The one-on-one sessions that Brightmark conducted with Richmond citizens, Mooney said, confirmed the foundation’s belief that the arts complex was really about the city’s citizens. And the name - Richmond CenterStage - is meant to connote that the complex is in the center of the city and the arts district, Mooney said.
… as opposed to, say, the planet Mars?