Conservator asks to liquidate August Wilson Center assets; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 1/21/14

Mark Belko, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Conservator asks to liquidate August Wilson Center assets:

"A former U.S. bankruptcy judge appointed to try to save the August Wilson Center for African American Culture has concluded that it is an impossible task under current circumstances.

In a report filed Tuesday, conservator Judith Fitzgerald recommended that the Downtown center be sold and its assets liquidated to pay off a $7 million mortgage and other outstanding debt. She said there is "simply no possibility of continued viability of AWC as it currently exists."

Ms. Fitzgerald made her recommendation, which will be discussed at a hearing Friday, after being rejected at attempts to secure funding for operations from the Heinz Endowments, the Richard King Mellon Foundation, the McCune Foundation, the Allegheny Regional Asset District, and mortgage holder Dollar Bank.

The result of the meetings with those entities and others "led to the unfortunate conclusion that there is no financial support for continuing the long term operations of AWC, and AWC cannot continue to operate without that support," she wrote.

And without such funding or more time from the bank to put together a business plan to "rebrand" the $40 million center so that it can continue to fulfill its mission, there's little hope of recovery, Ms. Fitzgerald said.

"Thus, the conservator is left with an impossible task; that is, to conserve an entity that has no strategic plan and insufficient cash to operate -- and has run out of time," she wrote."