Will Performing Arts Center Boondoggle Bail Out the Largely-Vacant ST. AUGUSTINE RECORD BUILDING?

MORRIS COMMUNICATIONS CEO WILL MORRIS, IV

COULD THIS BE crony capitalism? WILL there be a taxpayer bailout for MORRIS COMMUNICATIONS, the impecunious Georgia-based right-wing owners of The St. Augustine Record, which built a too-big building, then sold the Goss presses ($5 million worth), moved printing to Jacksonville, and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, leaving $300 investors relieved of $300 million.

Now MORRIS wants local taxpayers to subsidize its lavish lifestyle and bad business decisions.

We already have a Performing Arts Center (the $10 million St. Augustine Amphitheater).

Let the MORRIS family donate the space for the Performing Arts Center. WILL MORRIS: Don't think you can bamboozle us after having kissed local governments' butts.

Thanks to George Gardner's St. Augustine Report for breaking the story:

Performing Arts Center 

in the Record building?

   The mostly vacant St. Augustine Recordbuilding at SR 312 and SR 207, opened shortly before Morris Communications moved printing operations to its Times-Union facility in Jacksonville, is being eyed enthusiastically by the arts community as a Performing Arts Center.

   Romanza President Albert Syeles says the Record building's owner, Morris Communications, supports the idea of leasing its 15,000 square foot print room which could be a 400-500 seat auditorium. And the Tourist Development Council (TDC) will be looking at support of a performing arts center as it develops a strategic plan over the next two months.

   Romanza's monthly Gathering in January will include "a forum of three speakers who will bring to the table ideas on the process and prospects of opening and operating a Performing Arts Center (PAC), and of working together, with or without a Performing Arts Center," according to its monthly newsletter. 

    "The Architecture firm of DLR Group Westlake Reed Leskosky of Washington, DC is sending two representatives to address our St. Augustine Arts community," the newsletter states. "They have proposed renovations to the RECORD building for a PAC. 

   "And Eric Becher PhD of Vavarde Strategic Funding, will lead a discussion of how arts groups, including individual artists, can cooperate and benefit on matters such as fundraising, back-office, etc."

   The gathering will be held Tuesday, January 10, from 5-7 pm at The Reef on Coastal Highway, Vilano Beach.

   For more information on St. Augustine's performing arts center, visit and "like"facebook.com/StAugustineCenter.