Was curious to see the idea of a downtown performing arts center floated in yesterday’s Era. It’s an interesting idea, and may indeed fill a need. But of course the question becomes, how would this be built, how would it be funded?
Tax dollars? Perish the thought.
To be fair, no one in Jane Holahan’s piece said this. And my guess is that state funding would once again be made available (though it’s not as if this money grows on trees, it does indeed represent tax dollars).
And I agree with Citydweller, who notes that a little more coordination might have placed such a facility on Penn Square - a natural choice for it.
But we reach an interesting point now in Lancaster City, where there is indeed “a lot of juice flowing downtown,” as Mayor Gray says - but the vast bulk of it is taxpayer-financed juice, from the convention center/hotel project to the proposed federal courthouse, to the Pennsylvania Academy of Music, and possibly to this. And you could also add in what’s going on out at the old Armstrong site; projects that are both largely or entirely exempt from taxation which are also being constructed largely with tax revenue, be it from the federal, state or local level.
The gamble, of course, is that all this taxpayer money will attract private money. It has to an extent at the Academy of Music and at the old Armstrong site, but the prize on which we’re supposed to keep our eyes is development funded entirely by private money - development which does not require tax breaks (like KOZ or KIZ designation), development which will result in an ultimate and sustained swelling of the tax coffers.
If it doesn’t lead to that then what you’ve got is a “revitalized” urban core but one revitalized almost entirely on the backs of taxpayers. And I think the general consensus among officials here - and maybe in every city across Pennsylvania - is that as long as we’re talking state grants, as long as we’re talking hotel taxes, as long as the entire levy isn’t placed on the shoulders of local taxpayers, this is OK.
Lots of local folks think this isn’t OK, of course. I’m just not sure whether this city, or any other in Pennsylvania, has any real alternative.
