Dreams and reality

The Bangor City Council faces this difficult question: Should it remain fiscally conservative or risk $525,000 on a man with a dream of building a splendid arts school downtown? In the movies, you go with the man with the dream, he succeeds and everybody lives happily ever after. In real life, things are more complicated.

Daryl Rhodes, a musician, teacher, director of the Northern Conservatory of Music and Performing Arts and driving force behind the Maine School for the Arts proposal, has been working for years on his dream of turning the former Freese’s Department Store building into an arts school. He has an idea of what the school should look like and how the community would benefit. He submitted a business plan in June to the city, and councilors responded by approving an option to proceed with work on Freese’s, to which Bangor currently holds title.

What the dream lacks is capital. Remodeling the decaying Freese’s building into the proposed school could cost between $8 million and $9 million. Even completing the first phase of the project, which would get the school started on the lower floors and be open to retail shops on the ground floor, would cost $2 million. The agreement with the city requires Mr. Rhodes to show he has at least $100,000 in cash or the equivalent before he can proceed.

He has, however, recommended that the city make a matching loan for the project of $525,000, which would be paid back over several decades, to make the undertaking more attractive for matching funds. There is one good reason to approve the loan — everyone would like to see a successful restoration in the downtown — and at least three more compelling reasons to reject it.

The city already has extended itself on this project, offering technical assistance and, if mutually agreed upon conditions are met, selling the front portion of Freese’s to the project for $1. It agreed to grant the project $165,000 generated by the sale of the back portion of the building (which, in fairness, Mr. Rhodes helped arrange) currently being turned into apartments for senior citizens. It has encouraged the proposed arts school just as it has any other private endeavor. Asking the city to dip into tax dollars, however, asks too much.

The list of requests for city funding is long and growing. The waterfront. A baseball stadium. Possible expansion of the City Nursing Facility. Park restoration. A request to repair the city’s badly deteriorated sidewalks, a basic safety issue, turned up an estimated cost of $3 million. Bangor already is making difficult choices among what many people would consider minimal services.

When the City Council considered the school department’s last budget, Superintendent James Doughty walked councilors through the money requests line by line, explaining why each was important and justified. It would be contradictory for the council to deliberate over each item in the city’s school budget and then turn around and risk $525,000 on the possibility of a private school. (In any event, if there is money to be passed out, the Bangor school system’s well-respected arts and music programs could certainly come up with their own wish lists.)

No one likes to be the bearer of bad news, and the work done on the Maine School for the Arts to date has been heroic. If the option and interest exists for a less-expensive venue for the arts school, the city should work vigorously to help secure it. But money remains a daunting hurdle for school, and it is where the City Council should say no.