GPAC to be named the Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts

Steven Tanger
The downtown Greensboro performing arts center hasn't exactly been born yet, but this morning we found out what it will be called: the Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts.

The Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro announced that Tanger, the president and CEO of Tanger Factory Outlet Centers, will donate $7.5 million to the project — the largest gift yet — as long as private fundraising reaches $35 million.

The original target for committed private funds was $20 million, but Greensboro City Council voted last month to move forward with a plan build the center with $30 million from both the public and private sectors, a goal Community Foundation President Walker Sanders said was attainable. Including Tanger's donation, private commitments already reach $28.3 million, and the foundation said the new $35 million challenge is feasible.

Council and community members had already called the private fundraising "unprecedented" for the "game-changing" performing arts center, and Mayor Robbie Perkins said in a press release that he is "overwhelmed by the generosity of this gift."

The Community Foundation also released the logo for the center and said it expects the project to break ground in June 2014 and open in 2016. Here's the logo: 



3 comments:

Billy Jones said...

Like I've said from the beginning, they are building monuments to themselves.

Triadwatch said...

Not one mention of greensboro in new logo, pathetic

kdub1 said...

But are they counting the chickens before the eggs hatch? A new Council could halt all of this...in theory.

Two decades ago, Raleigh had a similar issue with its convention center--voters rejected calls for a new facility (11/92), but the city council voted to fund a new one anyway (summer 93). The result was eight years of conservative mayors--and NO new convention center.

The convention center was not replaced until 2008 when a new mayor took the reins seven years earlier and advanced the project (I don't know whether a vote was taken or if tax dollars were used because I haven't lived in Raleigh since 2003).