The lead of this article states that "The historic Miller Theater on Broad Street WILL be restored as a viable performance space in downtown Augusta." How is the reporter certain of this? Does the Symphony have a timetable in place for construction? Have they raised all of the additional money needed to start renovation? How much of the splost money do they have left after paying all of these consultants? About when could we expect to see a symphony performance in the restored Miller. It's easy to say you're going to do something but following through is another matter entirely.

Hey Willie, you got $20 million to spare? And what has taken so long for the symphony to make a decision? Mr Knox made the offer to donate the building to them more than 3 years ago. If you really want to see The Miller restored and re-opened within our lifetimes then this is NOT good news. There was another plan out there that would have been much cheaper, would have been implemented much faster and would have made for a more viable venue. The Symphony has been twiddling their thumbs for the past 3 years wasting time. They have not even begun to raise the tens of millions more they say they will need to restore this building. This is not good news if you are a Miller fan.

This is exactly why we need sunsets on splost projects. If a splost project is not under construction within 5 years of being approved by voters.. it is redirected to something else. heck there are a lot of things we could do to improve Augusta with $5 million but we have all of this money sitting around doing nothing because the projects never get off the ground as promised.

And Vito. They have already gotten over $5 million in our splost dollars. I remember when the debate over this was going on and it was put on the splost ballot a few years ago. We were told back then that it would take somewhere between $6 million and $7 million to fully restore the theater. So over $5 million was approved in splost and the SOA would have to raise the rest to get the money. Well two years have gone by and just now is the symphony even accepting the building from Mr Knox. He has been paying the bills on the theater all this time.. more than 3 years after offering it to the SOA and NOW after conducting their own studies, the SOA estimates it will cost around $20 million to retrofit the theater. Now if they are confident that they can raise all of that money and afford to maintain it as a symphony hall then good luck to them.

I love what the symphony does, but what they want to do with this building is too expensive and will make it difficult for other groups to use the building. There is no way they can maintain this building all on their own. But their plans will severely limit what groups can utilize the building. there were much less expensive plans on the table that would have allowed for a wider use of the building.

I believe so Doris, but The SOA got the bulk of it.

I forsee another money-pit here.