June 29
Money! It's a kick!
Fallout from Bradgate continues: Today A. Barton Hinkle, the "nipper" on the T-D's editorial page, makes sport of the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation's extremely well-paid CEO (second item). In the movie, Dabney Coleman will play Jim Ukrop and will throw his paper to the ground when he reads this, sputtering and stomping, as an unctous underling (Matthew Modine) tries to calm him.

June 25
A message to you, Rudy
Mayor Rudolph C. McCollum Jr. said he did not know the amount of Armstrong's annual salary. "The city does not set salaries or draft a budget for the performing arts foundation," he said in a statement, explaining that the decision of where to use the city's tax funds is left to the arts foundation. "It is a separate legal entity." —"Arts CEO earned $285,000 in 2002," Richmond Times-Dispatch, June 25, 2004
How's that policy working out for you, Rudy? By now, one would think you'd have some reservations about taking such a laissez-faire attitude toward the final resting place of public money. Even by the mediocre standards of Richmond government, where the only thing rarer than accountability is excellence, your tenure as mayor has been marked by a mulish determination to not see how sausages are made. No, it's not your fault that people in your administration abused Paygo accounts, or that several of your colleagues on city council felt their positions excused them from the inconveniences of reporting income or from remaining uncompensated when voting a certain way. But at some point, you have to accept some responsibility for a political culture of "don't ask, don't tell."

C'mon, Rudy. Last year you shepherded the meals-tax increase through council, going so far as to announce you'd delay the vote if you couldn't get it passed at the meeting last July. What was more important to you: Taking care of the wealthy businessmen who wanted this to go through (and from what we understand one of them was extremely, uh, persuasive) or making sure that the people's money would be well-spent? The VAPAF's IRS form 990 was available at the time of the meals-tax vote last year—why didn't you look at it? It took us ten minutes to locate this information on the Internet (for the record, we got it from Guidestar; next week, we'll start looking at the finances of the groups who'll be responsible for paying the arts center's operating costs if it's ever built, and believe us it's not encouraging).

Look, we think you got screwed. All along, you were assured by a motley group of wealthy suits that there would be payback if you didn't help them out. So you did, and now they're throwing their support to Doug Wilder, who wants version 3.0 of your job next year. So the way we see it, you've got a choice: Either start campaigning for the support of normal people like us—who'd like to see roads resurfaced, schools improved, and small businesses nurtured—or try to "me-too" your way into the hearts of business elites for whom grand public projects like the convention center, the Canal Walk, and the performing arts center are simply a capital way to a grand payday. You can't keep doing both, because the two groups' interests are so divergent.

All you need to garner our support is to grasp onto one of these projects—Cordish, the performing arts center, the new stadium—and figure out where the taxpayers' money is going. If the situation doesn't seem right, don't go to them: Come to us. Tell us you messed up by trusting these folks and it won't happen again. You might well still lose to Wilder this fall, but at least you'll lose with some self-respect. And maybe, just maybe, you might win.

It's a Friday, so we'll close with a song, one from which you might draw some inspiration:
Stop your messing around (ah-ah-ah)
Better think of your future (ah-ah-ah)
Time you straighten right out (ah-ah-ah)
Creating problems in town (ah-ah-ah)

Rudy
A message to you, Rudy
A message to you, Rudy
Oh, it's a message to you, Rudy
Yeah, it's a message to you, Rudy
Have a great weekend, everybody, and keep those tips coming!

June 25
Open the books!
Well, it seems that posting the VAPAF's IRS form 990—with the information that VAPAF CEO Brad Armstrong is paid the completely reasonable salary of a quarter-million dollars a year, plus retirement plan contributions—created a bit of a stir! As in, a front-page story in today's Times-Dispatch.

Some quick thoughts, and then we really have to get to a doctor's appointment: Perhaps now some clever soul will be emboldened to look at the VAPAF's books. We'd really like to know, for instance, where this $44 million that Brad Armstrong claims to have for construction actually is. (Maybe he's talking about his own checking account?) It would really just take an intrepid reporter or council member going down to the VAPAF offices and requesting to see a bankbook. Brad claims his salary doesn't come from public money, but how much private money has the VAPAF raised? Sources close to the fund-raising tell us it's not much, that people on the board haven't made good on their pledges and that Booty Armstrong (no relation to Brad) hasn't contributed anything at all.

While they're at it, perhaps our daring investigator might cast a skeptical eye on the fact that the VAPAF spent 80 grand on the "Future Is Wow!" event two weeks ago.

In the T-D article, Brad said, "I can say that the people that are involved [in the arts center] could make significant money doing other things in the private sector and have chosen to do things for reasons other than money."

Apparently, he's not one of them.

June 24
Clarification
Two days ago we reported that Brad Armstrong's salary is $250,000 per annum. We failed to note, however, that the VAPAF contributes an additional $25,000 per year to Brad's retirement fund (see page 15 of the VAPAF's 2002 IRS form 990 for details). Because, we suppose, when you're pulling down a quarter-mil a year you need help saving for the future. That must be the "new, success-driven spirit" city manager Calvin Jamison is positively crowing about!

June 22
How to win a Pulitzer (or a City Council seat)
All you have to do is phone up the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation (804-327-5750) and ask the following questions:
June 11
Damn straight we don't understand!
""There are some folks who don't fully understand what our project is about," Brad Armstrong told the Times-Dispatch on Sunday, when the reporter shared with him Save Richmond's criticisms of the proposed performing arts center, the project in question. The criticisms the paper ran were that the project is too big and hasn't been adequately researched—citing our example that the consultants who okayed the project decided not to include the Modlin Center for the Arts as a factor when trying to decide the potential audience for the arts center. Because, we suppose, a big, well-funded arts center THAT'S ALREADY IN THE WEST END with great programming and a loyal audience will have NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER on drawing suburban classical music fans downtown.

What we don't understand is why so few people have asked these questions before. If someone asked us for, say, $28 million dollars we'd kind of want to see some proof that we'd get it back. But the market research the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation has done so far seems to be of the caliber of its meals-tax-hike "research": A brochure mailed to Richmond residents that asked only how much of a meals tax increase we'd like to see.

Yes, there is a consultants' report. There's one for the convention center, too; click here to read an interesting interview with Heywood Sanders, a professor at Trinity University in San Antonio who specializes in large urban projects, on the methods used for those studies:
[B]y now I've read about forty different feasibility studies. And you know, not a single one says don't do it, don't build a new center. Not one even says this might not be a good idea, or maybe you should be cautious. Every single one says "build it, you'll do great." ... In any other area of economic activity, people know you have to build on your strengths rather than playing into your competitor's. If you were opening a small shop, a Mom-and-Pop store, where would you put it? Would it be at the intersection of your main street and the interstate, directly across from Home Depot? No, you'd find a niche where you can operate and they can't. You wouldn't go head-to-head with Home Depot; you can't compete on their turf and on their terms. The same applies here. Suppose you do double the size of your convention center, to 125,000 square feet. Well, the McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago has 2.2 million square feet, and they're desperate to fill it. They're even trying to lure small and medium-sized meetings, because there aren't enough big ones to fill the space. Buffalo can't compete with that.
We think it's safe to say Sanders understands what these projects are about. From the same interview:
The immediate proponents often are hotel owners and Convention and Visitors Bureaus. But it's usually the big boys, the major players in local business, who are really behind it. These are people who have a tremendous amount of money invested in the entire downtown area, and when the city's economy is doing poorly they're desperately concerned that they could lose a good part of what they've put into downtown. They may grab at anything that looks as though it might preserve that investment, without thinking it through carefully—especially if it'll be built with someone else's money. In those circumstances, it can be very difficult to stop the project, because of the incredible amount of money and resources—and passion—behind it.
The fundamental mistake Jim Ukrop, the chairman of the VAPAF board, makes in assuming that all downtown needs is a good "anchor tenant" probably stems from the remarkable success he's had with his grocery stores outside of town. Malls such as the ones in which Ukrop's stores are frequently situated need an anchor. When Thalhimers and Miller and Rhoads failed, the shopping center they anchored—Sixth Street Marketplace—withered. Cloverleaf Mall disintegrated when its anchors—Hecht's and Sears—made breaks for sunnier shores. There's nothing in Ukrop's experience to suggest that downtowns work any differently.

But ask yourself: What's the anchor of Carytown? What's the anchor of Shockoe Slip? Simply put, there is none. As Sanders notes in that interview:
[R]evitalization works where you have multiple small-scale undertakings, not blockbuster public investments. Compare SoHo to the West Side projects around the Javits Center—one wasn't centrally planned at all, it just happened as people discovered inexpensive space available in attractive buildings, and it's thriving. The other has received all kinds of public attention and isn't going anywhere.
Thalhimers is coming down, and that's fine. Demolition is planned to take five months—plenty of time to pare this arts center down to a size that might let it be successful. That's five months in which city leaders can take a more realistic view of Richmond's prospects and start leading instead of only following the whims of business leaders who've been snowed by questionable consulting. Look, we've read the consultant's study for the PAC. It doesn't make any sense. And it's about time we all stood up and said "We don't understand"—we don't understand how Richmond's future got so far away from the rest of us.

June 11
Holes in arguments, city center
The performing arts center just keeps getting cheaper! Why, only last week, Brad Armstrong told Richmond.com that the Thalhimer block construction would cost $100 million (plus, uh, $60 million for "improvements on several local theaters"—thanks, Elegba! Good luck raising the rest!). But in today's Times-Dispatch, we learn that the cost is only going to be $93 million, and that better yet, the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation, of which Brad is president, has raised nearly half the money for the project.

Other people familiar with the progress of fund-raising paint a different story. Of the $44 million Armstrong claims to have raised, so far, about $28 million is what the VAPAF expects to receive from the meals-tax increase it rammed through city council last summer (they don't get that money until they've shown that they've met private fund-raising targets). The VAPAF has about $16 million on hand, our sources tell us, and is having a lot of trouble raising the rest.

So you have to ask yourself, if this is such a great idea, why are wealthy donors staying away? We reckon that they asked for, and didn't receive, convincing evidence that a $160 million arts center in the middle of a strikingly conservative city doesn't make financial sense, and that they'd be better off endowing a library or swimming with dolphins or whatever the hell it is rich folks do. As we've noted all week in our special performing arts center coverage, Armstrong has yet to present a shred of the "reams of evidence" he claims to have that a center of this size will work. The only evidence we could find, the 2001 master plan by the same consultants who found arts centers to be feasible in a dozen other struggling cities, specifically did not take into account the box office done by the Modlin Center for the Arts at the University of Richmond, which is not going to stop putting on the most adventurous performing arts programs in town.

If you're an arts group in the Alliance for the Performing Arts, which has one seat on the VAPAF board, and you're not the Richmond Symphony, the Richmond Ballet, or the opera, you have to ask yourself, too, where that other $60 million is coming from, and how likely it is that the improvements promised to the theaters you're going to use are going to appear when in three years the VAPAF has managed to raise 10 percent of the cost of the whole project. You may pooh-pooh such a scenario now, but please note that in the master plan from 2001, the Landmark was supposed to be renovated first. That didn't happen, because the Thalhimer block is sucking up all the oxygen in this plan. Face facts, y'all: The people who own the buildings nearby the PAC—some of whom, coincidentally, are on the executive board of the VAPAF—have to have something flashy on Broad to boost the values of the buildings the Canal Walk and the Convention Center failed to raise. Your little theater group may well be standing around with your scripts in your hand when the dust settles between Sixth and Seventh Streets.

The Times-Dispatch article raises (briefly) the possibility that the Thalhimers block might not get rebuilt after it's demolished, which will take place over the next two weeks. We don't think that'll happen—the city will have to come up with something to fill that space if the VAPAF leaves us hanging. Our vote is for this: Booty and the rest of his pals on the VAPAF have been wrong so many times about what it will take to improve our downtown that it's kind of amazing the city listens to them at all. Here's hoping that when the VAPAF comes back to the city to "raise" more money for this project, they get shown the door. This would be a good year for city council to start leading instead of following. If they need a reminder of why, they can look at the hole picture on Broad.

June 10
Go to the light, old man
Talk about raising "egocentrism to the status of a virtue"—the T-D editorial page takes time off from wearing sackcloth and sitting in ashes over Reagan's death to come out against computers in classrooms! Well, since we're having 1980s nostalgia, we might as well have a 1980s argument, right?

June 10
Out of the park
Andrew writing: Hey, all you Richmond Indy Media folks who've written in complaining about the nerve I had to criticize your writing: Go get yourself a copy of Style Weekly and read this article by Amy Biegelsen. It's everything your pieces weren't. It doesn't affect the air of what IMC writers seem to think hard-hitting journalism sounds like, and it doesn't treat the readers like complete dopes who might somehow miss the point that the police overreacted when they gassed a roomful of peaceful partygoers. It simply tells the story from the perspective of someone who was there. (It helps that Biegelsen can write and, to be fair, that she's got access to a roomful of editors). And as such it is more effective than anything I've seen on the subject so far.

I wish I could say I was surprised by the tone of some of the letters I've received, but they're sadly typical of a town where everyone seems to be genuinely shocked that their actions may come under scrutiny. It's a top-down trend, from business leaders to city councilpeople to community activists. Here's something all might want to consider: Criticism is good. Considering other viewpoints only makes your work stronger. I'm sorry if I hurt anyone's feelings by calling the IMC writing "mediocre" but I'm not sorry I said it, especially if it means that the next time out, these writers might dial back the drama a bit and go for good, unpretentious reporting. My philosophy is that we can always do better, and it's up to us to police ourselves. Because it's quite obvious that we can't trust the police we've got now.

Media in Richmond can be better. That starts with all of us.

June 8
Ask the experts
Rochester, N.Y., has a lot of problems. As the city's Democrat and Chronicle puts it in a series of articles on the challenges facing the city, "It was the year of the ice storm. Two major power failures. Divisive political campaigns. Racial slurs. A relentless string of murders. A radical shift by the area's largest employer. And topping it off, potshots from the Toronto media."

We were like, DANG! That sounds familiar! (Except for the Toronto part—we're pretty sure no one in Toronto has heard of Richmond.)

Fortunately, Rochester has a plan: It's going to build a performing arts center. Right now, the feasibility of doing so is being studied, and there's even a proposed plan by an architectural firm named Wilson Butler Lodge.

If that name seems familiar to you, perhaps you're aware of the plans a consulting firm called AMS and Wilson Butler Lodge have put together for a performing arts center in Richmond. Or the one in Hartford. Or the one in Orange County. Or the one in Lynchburg. Or the one in Findlay, Ohio. Or the one in Fort Lauderdale. Or the one in Jacksonville. Or the one in Newark.

Soon, friends, America will be dotted by cities pinning their hopes on classical warhorses, traveling Broadway shows, and in many cases, theaters that shoot laserbeams into space. In architects' renderings, cars are always pulling up to these centers, and people are getting out and walking—yes, walking!—around outside, thrilled to be in the center of a city on the way back up.

To this august company we add our own city's name, waiting, hoping, thinking somehow this will work. Suburbanites will reverse course and embrace the urban core. Blight will disappear. Property values—especially those properties owned by members of the Virginia Performing Arts Foundation's board—will rise.

How else could it go? After all, the issues have been carefully researched and declared feasible. By the same group of thorough, well-paid consultants and architects. (Funny how Wilson Butler Lodge often gets the gig after consulting on each project. It's almost as if...naaah. We believe the VAPAF when they say our performing arts center follows a unique, non-cookie cutter approach that fits Richmond perfectly.)

Special thanks to Scott Nystrom for the research


June 7
The future is WOW: What Old people Want
Among the acoustical graphs of the Richmond Performing Arts Facilities Master Plan are a number of interesting facts. Such as that the consultants didn't take the Modlin Center into account when calculating the potential audience for a performing arts center downtown (and that the consultants, who presumably made a sum of money that would make Robert Evans weep, seem to think said Modlin Center is "at the University of Virginia"). Or that the original plan called for a park, not a symphony hall, where the Thalhimer building stands. (Guess we can chalk that one up to VAPAF boardmember Booty Armstrong's pathological fear of the homeless.)

But among the construction schedules and platitudes, one facet of the plan really stands out. The primary goal of the Alliance for the Performing Arts' "vision for arts facilities in Richmond":
1. Change the socio-economic, racial and demographic profile of the people attending performing arts in downtown Richmond.
Huh.

Change the racial profile. That's really kind of interesting, isn't it?

It gets even more interesting when you read the section on why the Alliance for the Performing Arts decided to exclude the Hippodrome from its plans. Pace the consultants' report:
In terms of meeting the needs of the African American community...addressing the Performing Arts programming needs is crucial.... The proposed changes at Empire produce an ideal scenario in which to address the needs of the Jackson Ward community. The location of Empire makes it accessible, and the facility, even in its present condition, is underutilized. As noted earlier, AMS [the consultant] also encourages that culturally diverse organizations are included as users of the 250-space [theater] to be located on the Thalhimer site.
Well, that's one way to "change the racial and demographic profile of the people attending performing arts in downtown Richmond"—give African-Americans their own theater, "accessible" to Jackson Ward. As if the south side of Broad Street is hard to get to from, say, Marshall and 2nd Streets.

Fifty years after Brown, and this is still the best we can do? I seem to remember from the meals-tax hike meeting last year that this project was supposed to bring the town together. This is neither a frank admission of the quixotic nature of that goal nor a shady plot to return Broad Street to its ancient role as the city's color line. But it still stinks. Maybe the septuagenarians on the APA board—and the West Enders Brad Armstrong is sure will flock en masse to a downtown free of "socio-economic, racial and demographic" undesirables to catch the touring company of Avenue Q or La Traviata—would prefer African-American programming, whatever the hell that is, be "addressed" across the street. (And don't give us any lip about the jazz club: We know damn well what the racial makeup of that audience is.)

Because if poor people, black people, and young people are undesirable in a downtown, we gotta ask: Who does that leave? A group of patrons who look almost exactly like the VAPAF's officers.

The future really is WOW! (Download the VAPAF's 276K invite to this coming Saturday's festivities, and by all means make plans to attend—it may be the last time trash like you gets to walk down Broad!)

June 4
Notes from the ignorant
Lately, Brad Armstrong has been kind of prickly. When he spoke at the Richmond Renaissance forum on arts development on March 1, Brad called an article in Richmond about the Performing Arts Center unbalanced, even though he was quoted more than anyone else in it, and called criticism of the PAC "silly." In today's Richmond.com he calls critics of the PAC "ignorant," insisting that the center's fund-raising is on track, that the president and the queen are coming to Richmond, and that the performing arts center will now cost $100 million, not $150 million as he's been saying.

Let's take this one assertation at a time. As to the cost of the PAC, these critics of the project plead ignorance—but only because the VAPAF has been less than forthcoming about its plans. The cost of the center was $90 million last summer, conveniently ballooned to $150 million the moment councilwoman Jackie Jackson offered a bill that would siphon off excess from the meals tax hike Armstrong et al. rammed through council to city schools. We heard that the $150 million estimate was considered low by the architects VAPAF engaged, but we're not allowed to go to Alliance for the Performing Arts meetings anymore, so we don't know what the damn thing costs. Only Armstrong does, and he seems to be flexible on the subject.

Now, as to fund-raising being on track: This goes to the heart of our criticisms of the project. Armstrong has assured us up and down that the businessmen running this project were only there to raise money. Let's take a look at their success rate, using the figures Armstrong provided (which, we might add, there is no way to verify). The $43.5 million Armstrong claims to have on hand includes $27.8 million the VAPAF expects to receive from the meals-tax hike, meaning that the foundation has raised all of $15.7 million, or slightly more than 10 percent of what it used to say the project will cost. Imagine what trouble the VAPAF would be in if it didn't have such competent business leaders! We say: Until the VAPAF demonstrates success "raising" money without coming to taxpayers hat-in-hand, the competence of Armstrong's dream team is an open question and one we will keep raising.

As to the ignorance of Armstrong's critics: Beautifully done. Keep everyone in the dark, change your story frequently, and then call people you won't share information with "ignorant." Here's one bit of ignorance we'd love to correct: Since we started Save Richmond a year ago, Armstrong has assured us repeatedly that there are "reams of information" that support the viability of a $150 million Performing Arts Center.

There is no such thing. (We must, though, consider the possibility that the research exists and Armstrong is just too polite to share it with the city and show how silly his critics are.) What does exist is a January 2001 study that recommends a considerably smaller Performing Arts Center than the multi-headed monstrosity that Armstrong has cobbled together to get all the big arts organizations in town on board. As far as we know, and we only know what Armstrong shares with us, there is no other research, and Armstrong's assertion that "We know, through all the research we've done, that this community can support way, way more than we're currently offering" is anecdotal at best.

Sure, Richmond could support more than it does now. It could also vote to rotate the city so that West Enders don't have to drive to work with the sun in their eyes. Neither seems likely, but after a year of dealing with Brad Armstrong, we'd much rather be working on the latter project, which compared to the Performing Arts Center, sounds completely realistic.

Finally, we just have to add that we love Brad's implication that the president and the queen will be "here." Sure, if by "here" you mean "60 miles away." Sure, if you believe that the president's schedule is drawn up years in advance and that we even know who will be president in three years. Let's get over this particular fallacy right now, shall we? And anyone who wants to help me jack up my house and transport it to Goochland is welcome to get in touch. I like to get a jump on things too.

June 3
It's a gas, gas, gas
Andrew writing: Fallout from the police-gone-wild weekend continues—normally sympathetic columnist Mark Holmberg is skeptical of the department's claims regarding both the necessity of killing motorist Satanna Bryant Olavarria in a traffic stop gone wrong and the necessity of teargassing a party on East Main Street. Meanwhile, the Richmond IMC swings for the cheap seats with a pair of maudlin, poorly written stories. "Independent" does not equal "amateurish," yo—you take back the media by doing a better job than other local outlets. Ledes like "Richmond's police force reared its brutal head on the punk community" do not cut it. Writing like this treats its readers as if they're too stupid to notice that the cops crossed a line; if I wanted to read mediocre, ideology-soaked pseudo-journalism I'd buy the T-D.

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