It seems like the Capitol Theatre has come full circle, a “hot potato” that council probably thought would never land back in its hands.
Plagued by negative feedback from its inception, the theatre has been a sore spot for many people who feel the exorbitant amount of money spent to bring the project to fruition was a waste of taxpayers’ money.
The bottom line, however, is the theatre is here and it’s not going anywhere, and it has the potential, if run creatively and frugally, to bring in lots of people (read dollars) to our community.
Yes, we have to let the past go and move on. Yet it is hard to throw support wholeheartedly behind council’s decision to have the municipality operate the theatre itself when Chatham-Kent staff put in a bid with help from, well, municipal staff.
Consultant Aileen Murray did a thorough and exhaustive job of setting the parameters for the Request for Proposal process, and as a third party, is beyond reproach.
What is hard to swallow is the inside track the internal municipal bid would have had on how much St. Clair College spent on operations, how much the draft municipal budget would support, and Mike Turner himself, the municipal CFO saying how he was consulted during the process.
Did the other bidders have that kind of access to information, and why won’t the evaluation committee say what was so off with the other two bids?
Are we against the municipality running the theatre? Absolutely not. As councillors said, it makes the most sense. But we can’t help but wonder why the other bids were so bad, and if they had a level playing field, would the outcome have been different?
One must also wonder if the two other bidders, the Jones Group and Studio Black, feel as if they just wasted their time in taking part in the RFP process.
