Tuesday night’s love fest between city officials and leaders of the Embassy Square Foundation was a wonderful pep rally for the project and for those involved. It did not, however, move the city one step closer to resolving its financial problems or open the second phase of the cultural center up to any serious questioning.
The two groups should have spent their hour together focused on two questions:
* When, if ever, will the city’s general fund recoup the $1.8 million Henderson spent upfront on the cultural center?
* When, if ever, should the city and the foundation push ahead with the plan to build a 1,000-seat theater?
The first question took Embassy foundation Chairman Sam Watkins about a minute to answer: The city won’t get any money now and shouldn’t count on getting any money ever.
Council member Ranger Wilkerson had the right attitude on that money when he said he’s never going to mention it again. “It’s gone.”
So it is. Whether it was an improper use of taxpayer money or a brilliant investment that will repay all of us many times over, or something that falls in the vast gray area in between, we can’t spend our time fretting about the long-gone funds now. (Election time, however, is another matter.)
As council member Mike Rainey said Tuesday night, the council’s main concern should be to put together the best budget possible before July 1.
Long term, the second question could have important budget implications for years to come, but it was barely touched Tuesday night. Watkins and fellow Embassy executive committee member Rick Palamar talked about completing the vision of the project and using the excitement of the new library to propel fundraising past the $15 million mark, which would provide the $6 million or so needed for the theater.
But at the same time they acknowledged the uncertainties of fundraising and laid the groundwork for shifting the blame if they fall short: It won’t be the fault of the hardworking Embassy foundation, but the voices of discord undermining confidence in the project.
Watkins said the foundation’s Commission II is completing a study on the uses and finances of the theater as part of the move to Phase 2. Yet even though the initial study is only 75 percent complete, according to Watkins, he and Palamar confidently projected that it will cost Henderson and Vance County little or nothing to run the theater.
We hope they’re right, but we fear that the study has a predetermined outcome. Hasn’t the foundation been fixed on building a performing arts center of a certain size for five years, despite the lack of a study proving its feasibility?
We still have doubts that the community wants this theater, that the community can afford this theater or that this theater will be the cultural and economic asset that the Embassy foundation touts. We’re willing to be convinced, but we haven’t seen anyone try.
Instead, Watkins and the rest of the foundation leaders have made an art of avoiding the issue. They talk about the library, which meets a serious community need, and they talk about fulfilling a great vision. But they rarely talk about why the theater should be part of that vision, or whether the foundation can complete the library if the theater is delayed or dropped from the plans altogether.
And there’s a frustrating refusal to see construction and operations as one process. Instead, the foundation is building a beautiful, much-needed library, but we don’t have the money to run it. We think the excitement of the new building could be converted into a successful endowment fundraising effort for the library, solving some if not all of the operational issues. Instead, the foundation is counting on that excitement to drive fundraising for the theater. Shouldn’t we at least discuss the options before charging ahead?
Tuesday night was a missed opportunity for such discussions. Somehow, what figured to be a session when the Embassy foundation would have to explain and defend its plans became a session when the city government apologized for its failures. Called to explain how they could help the city, the foundation leaders instead talked about what the city can do to help Embassy Square.
That’s the wrong approach. As we were reminded continually Tuesday, the Embassy foundation exists to serve the city, not the other way around. Listening to Rick Palamar tout Embassy Square as the most important development in Henderson’s history (our vote goes to the water system, with the hope that someday the hub will compete for the title), we wondered when the tail began to wag the dog.
PR disaster
We’d also like to say a few words about the issue of Embassy Square’s public relations and whether the project suffers from public misconceptions.
We’re not sure the public perceptions are so far off the mark. We think the a large percentage of Hendersonians, far more than the 50 Mayor Clem Seifert cited, view the project with enough clarity to reject the notion that if you like the library, you have to like the theater.
Council member Elissa Yount said she has never heard anyone speak against having a new library, and we believe that an overwhelming majority in this city supports the library project. But we also hear people question the Embassy project all the time, and those questions always revolve around the theater. We have too many other needs that would seem like a better use of $6 million.
That’s where the Embassy Square Foundation has to take the blame. Despite having supportive local media (the foundation board included the publisher of The Daily Dispatch from the beginning, and the newspaper donated to the first phase of the project), the foundation has failed to make the case for the theater.
In fact, the foundation has conducted far too much of its business behind closed doors, and for years it was terrible at providing information other than pure PR (the questions and answers the foundation issued in 2003 come to mind). The foundation has been much more forthcoming in the past year or so, but that change has come too late to avoid fostering suspicious minds in the community.
All of that said, we want to be as clear as possible about where we stand on the Embassy project. We believe that the library is crucial, and all involved in getting the new facility built deserve our thanks and praise. The library is so important that we’d like to see it built and its future secured before the next phase begins, whatever it contains.
But above all, we want the foundation to encourage and support a full public debate on Phase 2 before it’s too late.