I agree with the thrust of the recent criticisms about the city’s handling of the planned new Cultural Arts Center.
The project has taken too long, has been plagued by bureaucratic chaos and is possibly poised for considerable cost overruns.
And those aren’t the only reasons to be displeased.
Of course, there are reasons to be upbeat about the prospect of a new Cultural Arts Center, so I’m going to start with some of the positives.
Savannah is a city that values the arts. We have citizens and leaders who see the need for arts education and for civic performance and exhibition spaces.
The new Cultural Arts Center will house the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs, provide arts instruction and host performances by both touring and Savannah-based arts organizations.
Right now, the city is renting a nondescript building on Henry Street for the Department of Cultural Affairs. The small black box theater hosts some interesting performances, and there are a variety of classes and exhibitions in the main space.
But the aging structure wasn’t designed for any of its current uses, and it shows.
Meanwhile, month after month, taxpayers are on the hook for rent.
The idea for an impressive Cultural Arts Center took hold during the tenures of Mayor Otis Johnson and City Manager Michael Brown. The project was included in the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) referendum in 2006, with a budget line of $13.4 million.
Most voters did not know at the time, but city officials did know that many items on the project list would cost more than budgeted. With the Savannah economy booming, buoyed by housing and tourism, it was assumed that other money would be available to flesh out the SPLOST revenues.
For example, $80 million was budgeted for a new arena and a new public safety headquarters — way too little money to build both those projects.
Also, at the time of that 2006 vote, virtually no one was prepared for the depth of the 2007-2009 recession, which decimated sales tax revenues and other governmental funds.
So that $13.4 million estimate was low from the outset, but it’s still obviously worrisome that the proposed design could cost $25 million.
If the design is scaled back, what will we lose? Will the new building have performance spaces that could be used by the Savannah Music Festival and other organizations committed to programming of the highest quality?
Will we still have adequate spaces for summer camps, workshops and educational initiatives?
It’s absurd that the project has taken this long, but if we’re going to have a new Cultural Arts Center, we should make sure it meets diverse needs.
The location of the Cultural Arts Center has also been controversial, at least for some of us. I wish more people had objected when former City Manager Rochelle Small-Toney selected the current site at the southeast corner of Oglethorpe Avenue and Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard.
The site is perfect if we’re imagining the Cultural Arts Center as part of a grand gateway to the city.
But the downtown location will be harder for most citizens to access, and the site would undoubtedly be attractive to hoteliers and other private developers.
Why are we spending so much to develop a public building on a site that could attract private development and would add so much to the property tax digest?
The city acquired the site in 2011 from Chatham County, which had long considered it for the location of the transit center, which was eventually built next to the bus station across MLK.
At the time of the 2011 sale, a county official said that it could take years to find a private buyer for the site, and a city official said that construction of the new arts center would likely begin in late 2012 or early 2013.
Ha.
It’s also worth noting that for years the city had planned to build the Cultural Arts Center at Hall Street and MLK. That location would have truly benefited from public investment, would have been more accessible to local residents and would still have been within the Landmark Historic District, easily accessible to visitors.
City officials eventually decided the Hall Street location could not offer enough parking and that creating more parking would be too expensive. Of course, these decisions were made by a failed city manager and by the same departments that once deemed the chosen arena site too small, even though it has room for an arena, a stadium and other development.
So this whole project has been a mess — and a slow mess.
If we’re going to have a new Cultural Arts Center at such a key gateway to downtown, history will not look kindly on us if we flub it.
City Talk appears every Tuesday and Sunday. Bill Dawers can be reached via bildawers@comcast.net. Send mail to 10 East 32nd St., Savannah, Ga. 31401.