Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Being the brother of a big star didn’t guarantee success.
ROANOKE RAPIDS, N.C. (AP) — The future was looking bleak in this crossroads town just below the Virginia line. One by one, the textile mills closed. Thousands of jobs vanished.
Then a man rode into town, a flowing mane of graying hair spilling from beneath his black 10-gallon hat. Like a Galahad with a guitar, he promised prosperity in exchange for faith.
This knight in shining armor was, at best, lesser nobility; Randy Parton is the brother of a queen of country music, Dolly Parton. Still, the town fathers mortgaged the future to build him a gleaming music palace in a fallow field overlooking the highway.
His name was spelled out over the Doric-columned facade, his monogram — “RP” — emblazoned on the walls and eggplant-hued cupola.
Music filled the valley and, for a time, the people were hopeful.
Then the accusations began flying: Parton was spending the people’s money on drink and trips to Las Vegas, and enriching his children at the town’s expense. When the mayor went to the palace one night, he says he found the “savior” drunk.
The knight was banished. Legal action was threatened. The townspeople called for the heads of the mayor and his council.
Not the fairy-tale ending the struggling city of Roanoke Rapids expected when it borrowed $21.5 million to build the Randy Parton Theatre.
The $13 million, 1,500-seat theater on Interstate 95 was to be the cornerstone of an entertainment and retail complex that would turn this slumping mill town into a “Branson East.” But just five months after his first performance, Parton is gone amid complaints of low attendance, allegations of poor management and questions about how he spent $2.4 million in taxpayer money.
In his wake, townspeople are learning details of a public-private arrangement that guaranteed Parton and his “Moonlight Bandit” companies huge compensation with little personal financial risk. In hindsight, many say Roanoke Rapids should have known better than to hitch its wagon to such a low-wattage star.
“He’s known as Dolly Parton’s brother,” Jane Joyner said recently, bathed in the red glow of the neon pigs outside Ralph’s Barbecue up the road from the theater. “And that was about all he was known for.”
When the project first surfaced in 2005, most agreed the city had to do something.
The town of 17,000 — one of those rural burgs where the tallest structure for miles around is a water tower — was reeling from the loss of 5,000 textile and paper mill jobs, and the tobacco industry that once sustained the surrounding countryside was also in decline.
“The kids who have grown up in my store, I used to sell them back-to-school clothes ... They’re all gone,” says Kenny Lakhiani, who has run New York Fashions on Roanoke Boulevard since 1985.
Randy Parton had been a staple at his sister’s Dollywood theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., and had had a couple of minor country hits back in the 1980s. When the city learned he was looking for a place to build a theater, officials courted him heavily.
Some scoffed, but a 2005 feasibility study determined that this was far from a pipe dream.
Economics Research Associates — which has worked for the likes of Six Flags, Sea World and Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey — noted that 39,000 vehicles passed the site daily, and more than 400,000 people a year stayed in existing hotels within 10 miles of the theater. There are nearly 6 million people within a 100-mile radius of Roanoke Rapids.
On the other hand, ERA pointed out that the theater’s immediate service area was predominantly black — traditionally not the strongest audience for a country music act. While the theater had a prime location on a major north-south interstate, ERA warned that the area “is not known as an entertainment destination.”
Still, the firm concluded the theater was “a market-viable attraction concept,” if “certain underlying assumptions are met.” Among them were that “key elements” of the larger development — including two hotels and at least 200,000 square feet of retail — be up and running before the theater opened.
At a November 2005 groundbreaking, 10,000 people cheered as Parton performed with sisters Dolly and Stella. There were promises of many more such appearances to come, and city officials were confident Parton would be able to use his famous surname and industry connections to attract big-time acts.
Despite the fact that none of the retail spots had been developed and only one of the hotels was even close to completion, the theater opened on July 26.
When the show debuted, it featured electronically created “duets” of Parton — backed by a virtuoso band assembled by the singer and musical director Steve Dixon — and his more famous siblings. Slides of Dolly, Stella and the Tennessee mountains flashed on the walls flanking the stage.
Randy’s daughter Heidi Lou was part of the show, but that was as close as Roanoke Rapids would get to a Parton family reunion.
Although ERA gave an “optimistic” annual attendance estimate of 331,000, the firm warned it could take three to five years to “achieve stabilized occupancy.”
But Roanoke Rapids was impatient.
The theater was less than one-seventh full on average, and the city redrew its contract with Parton. The new deal cut his compensation from $750,000 a year to $250,000 and scaled his appearances back to just 36 in 2008. City officials hired Boston-based UGL Unicco to take over management and promotions.
Things came to a head on Dec. 6, when the city released documents revealing how Parton had spent $254,000 of a $3 million reserve fund. A spreadsheet showed Parton spent thousands on tickets to Vegas shows and payments to his own daughters, and hundreds at liquor stores from Las Vegas to New York.
Later that evening, a local television crew was in the parking lot when Parton emerged from a back door and announced he had “just got throwed out of the place.”
Mayor Drewery Beale, who had been the city’s police chief for three decades, said Parton appeared to be “under the influence” and refused to let him on stage.
In a six-minute interview laced with expletives, the red-faced singer denied being drunk. “I’ve done everything that I’s supposed to do,” he said. “I have honored all my agreements. I’ve got a good show.”