Up for debate tonight at City Council is an investment in new foam seats for Belk Theater. The Blumenthal Performing Arts is seeking $800,000 to replace the “outdated and noisy” spring seats.
“You’re sitting in the spring seat during a show and it’s really embarrassing,” President Tom Gabbard told WSOCTV.
Gabbard says the request would have come sooner, but the economic downturn tabled the issue until this year.
This won’t be the first time taxpayers have been asked to foot the bill for butt-related updates at the BPAC. Last year, Council approved an $844,100 project to renovate the ladies restroom on the Orchestra level.
Coming into question, of course, are fundamental issues. Should Charlotte invest in the theater when more pressing concerns – homelessness, for example – exist? Charlotte ponied up money for updates to the Panthers stadium. What’s another $800,000 for a cultural powerhouse?
The Blumenthal expects Council to approve the request.
- Jeff Cravotta
- A 2009 performance of ‘Snow White’ at Belk Theater
This article appears in Feb 19-25, 2014.
I don’t think the author knows what the word “investment” means.
Taxes aren’t investments, thanks for reading. To invest in something is to expect a return. In this case, the return would presumably be more shows, and higher-quality shows. We’d become a more established cultural destination. (Which means more money going into local hotels and restaurants, but that’s the nitty gritty.)
We wouldn’t get a traditional ROI, sure, but we would get something. How you define that something is the whole point of the debate.
As a wordsmith you should appreciate the proper use of the appropriate word(s). Your second paragraph (“we wouldn’t get a traditional ROI”) acknowledges that I am correct, yet your first paragraph offers several weak defenses.
First off, let me say that I am a frequent attendee of Belk Theater events: I’m a former Symphony season subscriber, and have seen everything from Elvis Costello to Opera Carolina’s Il Trittico last month. I have heard coughs. I have heard little old ladies take an entire concerto movement to open a cellophane-wrapped cough drop. I have sat behind a buffoon who thought the perfect accompaniment to Handel’s Messiah was a Tootsie Roll Lollipop.
I have never – NEVER – heard a seat squeak. It is rather silly – embarrassingly so – for you to suggest that the Theater’s allegedly squeaky seats are negatively impacting the number or quality of the shows held there. The notoriously cranky Mr. Costello did not interrupt his acoustic version of “Alison” to throw a can of WD40 into the audience, demanding that a squeaky seat be lubricated.
But let us as an exercise assume temporarily that there is a “squeaky seat” problem. Is that not an issue for the Blumenthal Center – an organization independent of the City – to deal with? Would it not demonstrate to those promoters ready to abandon it on account of the squeaks that the Center is on adequate financial footing to fund its own renovations, rather than running hat-in-hand to a political board?
Finally, I thought that CL was a left-of-center publication. It strikes me as odd that you’d ask working- and lower-class Charlotteans to bailout a facility that many will never be able to afford to patronize, whilst subsidizing the furs-and-diamonds crowd whose rattling rumps are responsible for the ruckus. If anyone’s seat squeaks, it’s Johnny Harris’s – let him pay for the upgrade.
I definitely appreciate your perspective. That’s what I wanted when I published this piece – different opinions.
Who owns the theater? That’s who should buy the seats.