An editorial “A High Note” comments on the Academy of Music as follows “…The trustees voted to pay up to $14.5 million, quite a bit of depreciation from the estimated $32 million that PAM spent to construct its palace on Prince….
“PAM founders Michael Jamanis and Frances Veri …seem to be in denial about the damage they’ve done to some of the biggest charitable foundations in the county – including the foundations associated with Lancaster Newspapers – and, by extension, to other nonprofits that won’t get the money they need because the foundations lost so much in the PAM debacle.”…
WATCHDOG: NewsLanc’s publisher opined to the executives at then mortgage holder (and subsequent owner) UNC bank that the Academy as a building was worth from $3 million to perhaps $5 million dollars, if that, it being a uniquely single purpose building. It is fortunate that Millersville University has evinced an interest at $14.5 including costs of renovations, because it is hard to imagine who else might. Hopefully, the price that Millersville eventually pays will reflect at least one current MAI appraisal that has been commissioned by the university.
Certainly Jamanis and Veri share much of the blame for “the damage that was done”, but they were the artistic branch of the leadership, albeit persuasive. To the extent damage was done to “charitable foundations in the county”, Paul Ware, who was Chairman of the Board of Trustees of PAM when the project was undertaken and the primary guarantor of PAM’s debts, should share in the blame. Did the Sunday News forget to mention, let alone blame, him and the various other trustees who served with him?
Moreover, the Watchdog asks: Indeed, what losses are these foundations going to experience assuming that the Academy is purchased for the better part of $14.5 million dollars, since the amoutn is sufficient to pay off all debt to UNCB and all other loans? Thus Ware, his Ferree Trust, the Steinman Foundation and the Lancaster Newspapers, Inc. will be relieved of their guarantees should the Millersville deal go through. Rather than have suffered losses, they will come through virtually unscathed.
Concerning “other nonprofits that won’t get the money they need”, there is a certain irony coming from the sponsors of the $185 million convention center, which absorbed a future decade worth of state government largesse, saddled the city with huge guarantees, consumed the millions of earmarked dollars that were supposed to go for the renovation and enlargement of the Lancaster Public Library, and is on the course of requiring at least a million more dollars a year in tax payer subsidies than originally anticipated.
We are delighted that Millersville University may be taking over the building. We hope they will also acquire the Brunswick and create a downtown campus. (For $14.5 million, they may have been able to purchase both.)
Although we appreciate the good intentions of Ware and the foundations, our sympathies lie with those persons who so generously contributed to the PAM dream and will not be bailed out by Millersville University, and with the taxpayers who will end up having largely funded both the dream and the ensuing nightmare.
One last question of the foundations: Now can PAM have its musical instruments back?
