Art Pope Donation Resurrects Lightner Center

The Clarence E. Lightner Public Safety Center project has been restarted with an unexpected, and very large, donation from Art Pope, director of Americans for Prosperity. The center's new expanded program includes a massive downtown magnet school, with new outreach programs focused on at-risk youths in various parts of Wake County. The expanded center is to be almost entirely privately funded, and will include a new branch office for the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, as well as a first floor museum dedicated to the history of the civil rights struggle in North Carolina.

I had this epiphany while driving to Raleigh after a cocktail party in eastern North Carolina. You could call it my 'road to Damascus' moment. I heard a voice, and knew immediately that I'd been entirely wrong all these years... You can't take back actions in the past, but I'm hoping that the new Lightner Center and Magnet School will help right some of the wrongs done by my organization, and others like it in the past.

No date has yet been set for the groundbreaking of the new and expanded Lightner Center, but sources within the County government indicate that the project will be fast-tracked. The new expanded center will be going for LEED Platinum Certification, and a fleet of new buses purchased expressly for the new school will run entirely on bio-diesel.

This was posted on April Fools' Day 2011.

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Architecture , Other posts by Rusty.

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