When finally completed, at a date yet to be known, the Terry Brown Amphitheater will be a concert facility capable of seating of audience of 3,000.
For now, it appears to serve another purpose: A punching bag for those skeptical of the city’s leadership.
There is nothing new in this dynamic, of course. Fifty years ago, after NASA’s successful effort to put a man on the moon, the complaint emerged, “We can send a man to the moon, but we can’t do…” You still hear that argument from time to time, all these years later.
Finding a scapegoat to articulate frustrations appears to be within our nature at times and, as scapegoats go, the amphitheater is an easy target.
Although the facility will be ready for limited use by July, when the second phase of construction is completed, the project will remain a work in progress.
So when people have to dodge potholes or some other problem emerges, some are inclined to look at the unfinished amphitheater and question the city’s priorities. “We can build an amphitheater that floods, but we can’t pave our streets,” is the complaint we’re hearing.
That the amphitheater has now flooded twice in a 13-month period certainly doesn’t help the amphitheater’s public image.
Yet there are some misconceptions about the amphitheater than cast the city’s project in an unfair light.
First, it should be noted that no city funds have been used for the construction of the project. Although it’s likely the city will have to foot the bill for the completion of the project, funding for the project has come through $3.5 million in state bond allocations.
If your street needs repaving, it’s not because the city used that money to build the amphitheater.
The flooding issue also reveals the scapegoat nature of the criticism.
Like the Riverwalk and the Soccer Complex, the amphitheater was designed with the potential for flooding in mind.
Unfortunately, back-to-back nearly-unprecedented floods have given critics of the project ammunition to attack the city. This notion that the city chose to build on a site prone to the type of flooding we’ve seen recently is revisionist nonsense. None of the engineering reports suggested the site would have the potential for the type of flooding we’ve seen the past two years. The project moved forward with the best information available at the time.
Interestingly, the city is also bearing the brunt of the criticism over the location of the Columbus Soccer Complex, built on the east side of the river. Built as a collaboration between the county and the city, we’ve heard not a peep of recent criticism directed toward the county supervisors for the decision to build the complex there, which, by the way, is at a lower elevation than that of the amphitheater.
Was the amphitheater a good idea in general? There are plenty of reasons to say no, but at this point we’ve committed to it.
Perpetuating the idea the amphitheater was knowingly built in an area prone to floods like we’ve seen the past two years is irresponsible. Also, that the entirety of the soccer complex flooding criticism is laid at the feet of city leadership strongly suggests scapegoating.
There may be any number of reasons to be skeptical of the amphitheater project, but a misdirection of city funds or a failure to consider flooding vulnerability in choosing the site are not among them.
Might as well blame the moon-landing for that, too.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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