Everyone is entitled to my opinions

When I first came to Lynchburg, Liberty University (then known as Liberty Baptist College) kept pretty much to itself as an institution, its entrance road blocked by a rather forbidding guard post. The students, while pleasant enough, seemed to regard the surrounding community only as evangelization fodder. In the minds of many Lynchburgers, LBC was to Lynchburg as the Branch Davidians were to Waco.

Boy, has that changed. Now, the relationship is becoming more like that of the Mormons and Salt Lake City.

Just look at the giant mountainside “LU” (visible from just about anywhere on the east side of town), not to mention a year-around ski/snowboard slope. The local restaurants and stores are full of LU students, both shopping and working. Liberty has even barged into local politics, hauling busloads of young (mostly) Republicans to vote in the House of Delegates election last fall. And this week, we find out that the school now owns two of the area’s three largest shopping centers.

Personally, I have mixed feelings. I can’t help that — I’m a mixed feelings kind of guy.

Certainly, there have been things that LU chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. has done (or have been done on his watch) that I didn’t agree with. I thought closing the Plaza parking lot when Barack Obama spoke at E.C. Glass was an act of petulant partisanship, as was stepping on the LU Democratic Club.

On the other hand, Liberty has also demonstrated a concern for the city as a whole on occasion, such as allowing local high schools to use the Vines Center for graduation ceremonies. And I thought Falwell’s recent offer to help with the construction, care and feeding of a new civic center was intriguing.

I have a personal interest in this civic center question. Back in the 1980s, when civic center talk surfaced for the second or third time, it occurred to me that Glens Falls, N.Y., where my parents then lived, was very similar to Lynchburg in many ways — and its civic center was thriving.

Glens Falls was almost exactly as far away from a larger civic center in Albany as we are from Roanoke. Its population was (and is) a third smaller than Lynchburg’s. Somehow, they made it work.

So I mentioned that to then-City Manager Sonny Culverhouse, and he invited the Glens Falls mayor and the civic center director to participate on a panel discussion, along with Carey Harveycutter with the Salem Civic Center and somebody from Charleston, W.Va. They all said: “Lynchburg should do this.”

A year later, it was decided to have a feasibility study. The feasibility study turned thumbs down on a civic center, although it gave limited approval to a watered-down facility for minor trade shows and meetings.

For those of you who may remember this, there was a gaping hole in the reasoning of the Atlanta group that did the study. On the issue of entertainment, they said Lynchburg was too small to support the appearance of big-name musical acts.

They were wrong then, and they would be 10 times more wrong now. If someone like the Dave Matthews Band or Kenny Chesney or Amy Grant were to play here (and I’m not necessarily saying they would), the audience wouldn’t just come from Central Virginia, but from four states and a four-hour-drive radius. In this Internet age, the word would get out even faster and stronger.

Even groups slightly below the caliber of those I mentioned could fill a standard-sized civic center easily. They would be the chocolate chips in a civic center cookie — meetings and trade shows and Liberty University activities could supply the dough. And this would complement, not hurt, a rejuvenated Academy of Music.

You probably couldn’t build a civic center in Lynchburg, because there is nowhere left to put it. But there’s plenty of level land in Campbell County, and probably a few decent sites in Amherst and Bedford, as well. The tax and tourism benefits would be significant. Just ask Glens Falls.

I also like the idea of creating a polling place on the Liberty University campus to prevent another LU invasion of Heritage Elementary School.

It’s been done on other campuses, so there’s a precedent in place. It would ease congestion and confusion at Heritage. And from Liberty’s point of view, it would remove the spectacle of mass student voters arriving in buses — a threatening sight for some people.

If you’re against an LU mass vote, leaving the polling place at Heritage isn’t going to stop it, anyway.