Arts & Entertainment

UPDATE: Arts Center is a Go

City Council grants PCA a 10-year lease of the former Christian Science church.

As soon as City Council delivered its unanimous vote approving the lease of 801 Magnolia Ave Monday night, Piedmont Center for the Arts President Nancy Lehrkind and other backers of the newly minted arts organization dashed down the block to hang the sign.

The council heard no dissenting testimony through two readings of the lease ordinance despite some initial criticism when PCA proposed a 10-year rent-free arrangement in March. The proposal came on the heels of failed negotiations between the city and the Piedmont Swim Club over the lease of the municipal pool that had stalled over the city's insistence on cash rent.

City Administrator Geoff Grote deflected any lingering concerns Monday that the agreement to hand over the former Christian Science church to PCA for a dollar a year was a sweetheart deal. Grote said the arts center agreement is comparable to the original 30-year Swim Club lease under which the municipal pool facility was built and the club paid no cash rent. The PCA lease requires the organization to do an estimated $75,000 worth of work on before occupying what Grote described as an otherwise "unusable" building and the improvements will become the property of the city at the end of the lease term.

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"That's exactly the deal the council made all those years ago with the pool," Grote said.

Once the original lease expired, the Swim Club had subsequently paid $38,200 in cash rent under the 15-year renewal that operated from 1993 to 2008.

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In an interview Monday before the council meeting, Grote suggested in 10 years PCA might well be asked to start paying rent too.


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