Posted on 05/13/2010 5:29:39 AM PDT by AT7Saluki
Raleigh is working with Anheuser-Busch on a deal for the naming rights to the city's new downtown amphitheater, but state liquor regulators are hesitant to approve such a deal, WRAL News has learned.
The City Council last week voted to name the venue the Bud Light Amphitheater for an undisclosed sum, according to a statement signed by City Clerk Gail Smith.
"This will help us pay for a very substantial portion of the amphitheater. So we are hopeful that it will be approved," Mayor Charles Meeker said Wednesday.
Doug Grissom, assistant director of the Raleigh Convention Center, which operates the amphitheater, said Wednesday that no deal has been reached and that the City Council hasn't voted on the draft contract obtained by WRAL News.
"We are not into a contract. We have not negotiated or signed a naming-rights contract with anyone," Grissom said.
City staff members used other naming-rights deals to cobble together a proposal to present to Harris Wholesale, a Raleigh-based Anheuser-Busch distributor, to begin negotiations, Grissom said.
The council vote, he said, was so the city could seek the approval of the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission on a deal with Harris Wholesale. Under state liquor advertising regulations, an alcoholic beverage cannot be part of the name of a public venue.
(Excerpt) Read more at wral.com ...
Selling our souls, one boondoggle at a time.
sure...tax and harrass and Random Checkpoint them out of business...until you want some of their money to bail you out of your stupid spending decisions
I live in Raleigh. Mayor Meeker is going to need to subsidize this fiasco somehow. Booking has-been bands like The Backstreet Boys isn’t going to sell any tickets.
“”Ten or 20 years ago, you wouldn’t have seen a public facility named after a beer or beer company in a Southern city, but things really have changed,” Meeker said.”
I say, Ten or 20 years ago, a mayor would not have had the unmitigatetd audacity to blatantly ignore State law and then say “nyaah nyaah nyaah nyaah nyaaaaaah nyah”.
Oh wait a minute, Meeker’s a Democrat. Never mind.
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