The Roanoke Rapids Theatre and the Carolina Crossroads Music and Entertainment District — It started as a dream turned into a nightmare and is now a $21.5 million debt albatross and a bundle of hopes for the future tied to a Valley native turned Chicago entrepreneur.

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How did we get here? Did we miss or ignore the warning signs? Was too much done behind the scenes and closed doors? Did slick promoters take the city for a ride or was it driving itself to the wreck, star-struck by Randy Parton? Who was calling the shots? What were our city leaders saying in public and in private?

Those are just a few of the questions we will endeavor to answer in the series of stories beginning today in The Daily Herald.

The second installment will publish in Friday’s edition and a third in Sunday’s paper. Others will follow.

For this series, The Daily Herald has turned to hundreds of pages of closed session minutes released by the city, dozens of memos and e-mail reports.

We have also depended on numerous interviews conducted over the past five plus years as well as reports from other sources.

Although several sources have discussed their perspectives on background with assurances they will not be directly quoted, we have not used any of this information without being able to verify it through independent sources.

The municipal elections are just a few weeks away and the theater issue is a fundamental bone of contention in the quest for votes and support. This series hopes to put the issue in perspective and answer our readers’ and the voters’ concerns.

Some of our initial findings include:

• The city’s desire to find a solution to the economic morass left by the closure of the textile mills fueled the search for a solution built on hopes and optimism while seemingly ignoring potential problems.

• The timing of the theater’s construction and the private development of Carolina Crossroads were not in synch when market research studies stressed the need for a unified effort. This put the theater on a weaker economic foundation than forecast in the market studies and revenue analysis.

• Randy Parton was given a sweetheart deal, access to millions of taxpayer dollars and treated as royalty with few, if any, checks and balance points on his performance.

• City leaders confided their concerns in private but rarely spoke of potential problems in public.

• Certain due diligence steps may have been overlooked or dismissed in the plans for the music and entertainment district and theater.

• The city had no formal plan of what would happen if the deal with Parton collapsed and paid dearly for the lack of planning when the entertainer was shown the door.

• The nation’s economic problems have hampered the development of Carolina Crossroads and left hundreds of acres of land vacant and progress represented only by small logos on a map of the site where hotels, restaurants, pool emporiums and an aquatic center were planned.

• The city turned to the legislature for help in annexing the Carolina Crossroads land and the private property in the adjoining neighborhood. A change in the law allowed the annexation and has left many residents in the neighborhood bitter over the experience.

• What role did the never-before-used tax incentive financing program play in the theater’s development and problems? Allowing the sale of bonds without the vote of the public, this program has sparked controversy and questions. Although used successfully in other parts of the nation, tax incentive financing is new to North Carolina and questionable in many people’s minds.

• We will also examine who the players were in developing the ambitious plan for the theater and the entertainment district and where the dream stands now.

The beginning

The first inklings of something big was about to happen came in the summer and fall of 2004. Randy Parton, the brother of megastar Dolly Parton, wanted to open a theater of his own and he was looking.

Enter Rick Watson and the Northeast Partnership and the search turned to Eastern North Carolina. The Partnership is a state-sponsored agency with the purpose of encouraging economic development in Eastern North Carolina. Numerous communities were approached and several made tentative offers or discussed concepts with Watson and Parton.

Roanoke Rapids quickly came to the forefront.

At the same time, developers Michael Dunlow and George Ragsdale were looking at transforming 625 acres of rolling farm land into a mecca of entertainment and commercial activity.

In December of 2004, the city, the Halifax County Tourism Authority and the developers pitched the idea of the Carolina Entertainment and Music District to Parton.

A month later, the city and Parton executed a letter of intent to create the district and build the theater. Parton would lease the theater and eventually own the property.

A market feasibility study is ordered on the theater project then known as The Randy Parton Theatre.

All of this was done behind the scenes. The first public announcement of a deal for the development of the music and entertainment district would not  come until June 2005.

Coming Friday: The series Behind the Curtain will examine how the deal came together, what the marketing reports said and what changes in state law were needed to make it all work.