Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
The Asheville Citizen-Times has more good follow-up, by reporters John Boyle and Carol Motsinger, on the recently bankruptcy announcement by the Health Adventure, the local nonprofit that had big plans to build a $25 million museum in the Montford nieghborhood. Now the Health Adventure wants to stay in its current downtown location in Pack Place. The Health Adventure’s reversal is throwing a wrench in two other organizations’ plans to expand – both the Diana Wortham Theatre and Asheville Art Museum have big plans.
Next month, Pack Place partners will decide whether to allow the Health Adventure to stay.
Meantime, Montford neighborhood residents want to know what is going to happen to the proposed museum site, which is essentially a big dirt hole. The Citizen-Times story says the property will go through bankruptcy proceedings, which means ending up in the hands of the bank, then sold.
But some residents want Asheville City Council to step in and take control of the property so that some undesirable development doesn’t happen on the site. We’ll have to wait and see on that one.
From the story:
The financial documents the Health Adventure provided to the Citizen-Times depict an organization struggling at times to balance spending and income.
A document outlining “Capital campaign revenues and expenses from July 1, 2003, and ending Dec. 31, 2010,” shows total revenue was $8.6 million, while expenditures tallied $10.6 million.
The Health Adventure broke ground on Momentum in December 2008, and in the two fiscal years before that, the capital campaign had revenues of $3.5 million and expenses of $2.3 million.
But for the two fiscal years between July 2008 and June 2010 and a half-year between July and December 2010, the Health Adventure brought in $2.9 million but spent $5.5 million.
Besides the largest fees, the Health Adventure also incurred a wide range of other expenses from 2003-10, the period that Momentum was in play.
That included almost $140,000 for a proposed monorail for the site, $668,506 in interest expenses for loans and nearly $400,000 for “professional services” that included archaeological impact and environmental impact studies.
The Health Adventure also spent about $223,000 on public relations and advertising. The organization had ramped up its hiring in anticipation of the Momentum site, at one point reaching 38 employees.
I see the Grove Park Inn general manager was on the Board of the TDA & Health Adventure, AND the CEO of Health Adventure was on the BOD of the TDA…. when two million was given to this pie in the sky endeavor. What's with the appearance of conflict of interest?
Jason, thank you for reporting on this – and I hope that the public lens continues! Most of this is not new – the Momentum documents were publicly available years ago- including a ridiculous plan for a man made creek, a "Progress Energy Fountain" and a corporate sponsored planetarium. They continually ignored local businesses and instead sought corporate sponsors and non-regional "program equipment". The construction was protested with full knowledge of how foolishly large and irresponsible the budget was and the environmental and scenic degradation in teh Montford neighborhood is criminal. Please keep the spotlight on this idiotic action – we proud Ashevillians should never let this kind of thing happen, nor let those responsible go unpunished. Shame on Momentum.