‘We voted for the JBA’: City leaders fight name change for new arena
AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - Augusta commissioners have made it official: They don’t want James Brown’s name removed from the downtown arena when it’s rebuilt.
This comes a couple of weeks after the Augusta-Richmond County Coliseum Authority revealed that it intended to sell the naming rights for the rebuilt arena. The agency claimed it has always intended to – despite early drawings of the new building that featured the name of the Godfather of Soul as well as a URL on an authority’s website referring to it as the new James Brown Arena.
Commissioner Alvin Mason pointed out the James Brown name on those early drawings at Tuesday’s meeting.
The name on the renderings subtly changed to “Augusta Entertainment Complex” sometime between a failed 2021 vote on a tax plan to fund the arena and a second vote that ed in 2024.
Nobody seemed to notice, and once the sales tax ed, everyone kept calling the planned new building “the new James Brown Arena.”
The authority didn’t step forward and say anything different.
That changed when the authority politely asked that it not be called the James Brown Arena because the new building might not bear that name.
Instead, officials said we should call it the ”new arena.”
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In fact, authority officials said, the rights to James Brown’s name had been sold by the family to an outside company, so the authority couldn’t use that name if it wanted to, officials said.
That company quickly came back and said Brown had gifted his name to the arena free of charge, and the company intended to honor that. The company went so far as to say it was “appalled” the authority would give up the honor just to make some money by selling off the naming rights.
Commissioners agree.
“The name James Brown will remain on this arena just like William Bell’s name has remained on the auditorium, through all renovations,” Mason said Tuesday.
Mayor Garnett Johnson said he s keeping the brown name, and Commissioner Brandon Garrett said: “We voted for the JBA, not the NA.”
Commissioners voted Tuesday to ask the city attorney to draft a letter of solidarity for the commissioners to sign, ing keeping the name “James Brown Arena.”
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