Aided by tax money, project shrinks from initial concept
MARK JOHNSON
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North Carolina and federal taxpayers won’t get the teapot museum they helped pay for.
Organizers of the Sparta Teapot Museum, which received $900,000 in taxpayer-funded grants and a bushel of unwanted publicity, are planning to build a very different museum than first envisioned. It’s expected to be a fraction of the original size and won’t focus exclusively on a donated teapot collection.
The wealthy principal donor plans to take many, though not all, of his teapots elsewhere and has all but abandoned the idea of building a 10,000-square-foot foundation headquarters in the small N.C. mountain town of Sparta.
The cutback and overhaul present the latest rough patch for the project. News stories in 2005 detailed how then-House Speaker Jim Black shoehorned $400,000 in state funding for the museum into the state budget in the final days of negotiations with no public hearing or debate.
Scrutiny of the grant heightened attention on a series of scandals involving Black that stuck with him for months until he pleaded guilty to unrelated federal corruption charges in February and was later sentenced to five years in prison. (more…)
Raleigh, NC
