Civic Center

Just in via email from PARC

A New Name?

Mayor Terry Bellamy and U.S. Cellular just announced a plan to sell naming rights for the Asheville Civic Center to U.S. Cellular. The Citizen-Times published sketches of the Civic Center with its new signs and the Civic Center staff started answering the phone "U. S. Cellular Center" before the City Manager stopped them.

The plan is to rename the Civic Center the U.S. Cellular Center, for $1.3 million over 8 years. This means "U.S. Cellular" will be mentioned countless times on TV, radio, and in the newspapers every time a concert or event comes to our Civic Center.

Advertising like this is worth a lot, perhaps several million dollars. Competitive bids would tell us just how much, but there were no bids -- just the deal with U.S. Cellular.

If we do want to rename the Civic Center, shouldn't we have the discussion first and a decision later, instead of the other way around?

Maybe we don’t want to sell the naming rights. Maybe we'd like to keep the old name. Maybe we'd rather call it the Jeff Bowen Center. Nobody's asked.

And if we do sell the naming rights, shouldn't they go to the highest bidder in a transparent way?