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Cameron O’Hanlon, executive director, Arts, Culture and Tourism Authority, on plans for the Performing Arts Center:
The refrain, “you reap what you sow,” is one of those common idioms so frequent in our culture we sometimes forget to stop and think about its meaning. Often, we hear this phrase in the negative – that we get what we deserve. But 2 Corinthians 9:6 paints a more complex picture:
“Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.”
Admittedly, having never planted a crop in my life, I cannot vouch for the farming advice contained within this verse; that farmers who fail to plant their seed abundantly cannot expect abundant returns. But I know this: We get out of things what we are willing to put into them, and those who fail to invest abundantly cannot expect abundant returns.
It is rooted in this philosophy that, with the support of the Clarksville community and confidence of the City Council, we are building a new Performing Arts Center on First and Franklin Street in downtown Clarksville.
The investment has a literal sense to it. The vastly increased activity downtown spurred by this new 500-seat Performing Arts Center will transform the opportunities for business owners in the area. The vacant storefronts will soon be filled by entrepreneurs motivated by the prospects of strong returns with hundreds of people attending the venue three to four nights out of the week.
But the greater investment is in the people of Clarksville. This center will be a place not just for performance but for culture, for convening, for curiosity, and for community. A place to sit shoulder to shoulder with your neighbor and laugh and cry and experience beauty at its highest level. The time is now to make this investment in Clarksville.
Funding stream established with hotel/motel tax
Really, the time was 2024, and Clarksville met the moment then. Two years ago, the Clarksville City Council approved a new 2.75% occupancy tax on hotels and motels within the city limits to fund the new Arts, Culture and Tourism (ACT) Authority and eventually the new Performing Arts Center. The city purchased the site with plans of building the new center where the existing Roxy sits and continue a century-long tradition of entertainment on First and Franklin.
Since then, the city engaged Lyle-Cook-Martin Architects to design the new venue, and lead designer Brad A. Martin III (who grew up going to movies at the Roxy) took up the mantle in a way that achieved two goals: design a state-of-the-art Performing Arts Center fit for a growing city in 2026 and honor the history of Clarksville and Roxy while doing so. The result is the venue you see here. One that maintains the façade of the Roxy Theatre (and therefore of Franklin Street) and is ready to welcome the best artists from around the world. We are ready to start building.
No additional funds requested from city
Our final step is an important one: the Clarksville City Council must approve the City’s backstopping of the debt needed to finance the construction costs. There are three points about this debt that are important to know. First, the ACT Authority is its own, independent, nonprofit organization, and therefore the debt it takes on is its own; not the city’s. Second, to service this debt, the ACT Authority is required to use the earnings from the hotel/motel tax, private fundraising, earned revenue, and its own reserves before requesting any additional funds from the city. And three, if additional funds from the city are required to service the debt, those funds are required to be paid back as soon as possible.
Even the most modest and conservative of revenue projections show that the city would not need to provide any additional funding to finance the construction of the Performing Arts Center – and therefore zero taxpayer funds beyond the hotel/motel occupancy tax already directed to the effort will be required.
Fulfilling a long-kept promise to Clarksville
I have had the pleasure of hearing from folks from every corner of Clarksville who believe, as I do, that Clarksville not only deserves a major cultural institution it can call its own; that this space can and will serve every person in Clarksville across every generation, cultural background, or economic background; but that this project achieves the long-held priority for the City of economic investment in the downtown area.
I, of course, also hear from skeptics. Though, the most common refrain I hear is simply that this will never happen. Not that it is not needed or wanted. Not that we won’t be successful or that it will not be well supported. But the people in Clarksville have been promised projects like these too many times only to have them fizzle out after decades of speculation.
And we run that risk with this project as well. Any further delay in breaking ground risks pushing this project into a price range that will make funding impossible and add the Performing Arts Center to the list of initiatives that faded from sight.
‘Projects like these are the seeds we sow’
So I return to 2 Corinthians. Those who fail to invest abundantly cannot expect abundant returns. We cannot simply hope better circumstances into existence, nor can we wait for some better days to find us. Projects like these are the seeds we sow so we may reap their rewards for the betterment of our communities.
To the people of Clarksville, I ask for your support. If you, like I do, believe this project is too important to let slip away from us, make your voice heard. And to the members of the Clarksville City Council, I hope I can count on your leadership and your vote to make this important investment in our city.
Cameron O’Hanlon
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