Monday, Feb. 24, it was announced that the grand opening of the Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts would feature Josh Groban on Friday, March 20.
While that announcement was being made, the Greensboro City Council was holding its annual retreat in the board room of the ACC Hall of Champions at the Greensboro Coliseum.
The timing was entirely fitting because the idea for what has become The Tanger was first discussed by the Greensboro City Council during its annual retreat in January 2012 at the ACC Hall of Champions. The discussion was about what to do with the old War Memorial Auditorium at the Coliseum and the proposal was to build a new auditorium on the same site.
Robbie Perkins, who was mayor, pushed for building the new performing arts center downtown. He suggested that the difference in cost estimated at the time to be about $10 million could be raised privately, so it would be no additional cost to the city.
At the time no one suspected it would take eight years to get the new performing arts center completed or that the final cost would be more than $90 million, with half of that raised privately.
It was a year later in February 2013 that the Greensboro City Council voted to commit $20 million in funding for the project estimated to cost $60 million, and requested that $20 million be raised in private funding. The city funding designated for the performing arts center was from a combination of hotel/motel tax revenue, and parking and user fees.
In September 2013, Steven Tanger committed to donate $7.5 million and the center was named the Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts.
The official groundbreaking was held on April 26, 2017.
The Tanger, with 3,023 seats, plans to host more than 150 events a year and has already sold over 16,000 season tickets.
Tickets for the grand opening with Josh Groban go on sale to the public on Monday, March 2 at TangerCenter.com, Ticketmaster and the Greensboro Coliseum box office.
