Greensboro Ovation

A half-built amphitheatre next to the city-owned Greensboro Coliseum Complex in North Carolina might get finished after all – an amphitheatre that originally made news because the city didn’t even know was being built.

Construction will resume on the 12,900-square-foot amphitheatre in September because of the Global-Spectrum-owned concessions company Ovations, the food vendor for the complex. Ovations is funding most of a $1.2 million VIP lounge at the Greensboro Coliseum, and the City Council realized July 20 that an extra $125,000 could help complete the shed.

“So there could be a possibility of using non-Greensboro taxpayer money to complete the amphitheetre that’s basically sitting there growing weeds on the backside of the Coliseum?” Council Member Robbie Perkins reportedly asked complex director Matt Brown.

Brown responded that the Ovations funding would go a long ways toward completing it, and the board voted 4-3 to move forward with the shed.

The City Council was initially surprised to hear of its own project was under construction.

The amphitheatre had been allocated $95,000 from an interim city manager. Several officials were caught off guard last fall when they learned some work, including grading, had already begun at the site.

“This whole thing happened out of the blue,” councilwoman Mary Rakestraw told WGHP News. “It didn’t go through City Council, was not a line item budget and we didn’t vote on it.”