Florida lawsuit

[sandik]

This link

Florida lawsuit

takes you to the public notice about the lawsuit "Florida State University Foundation Inc. vs. Sarasota Ballet of Florida Inc.," but aside from the little note that it's about "contract and indebtedness" there are no details. Does anyone reading here know anything more about the situation?

[bart]

Sarasota is far away from our part of Florida, but I did come across this 2004 article which reports the possibility of a suit. It's old, but discusses connections between the two organizations. So there appears to be a long history of disagreements over the use of the facility and the question of whether or not FSU students benefit from the deal with Sarasota Ballet.

http://media.www.fsunews.com/media/storage...t-2360222.shtml

The Sarasota Ballet apparently performs at an FSU facility that is part of the Ringling Center for the Cultural Arts.

http://www.fsu.edu/~ringling/pages/page_04.html

Here's the 2007i-2008 Sarasota Ballet performance schedule.

http://www.sarasotaballet.org/index.php?su...ew=performances

Also, an article on the new Artistic Director, Iain Webb, formerly from K-Ballet Company of Japan, and his plans for the coming season:

http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll...BLOG16/70523014

[sandik]

Bart, thank you for doing all that digging. If my math is correct, it looks like the company has a 46 year agreement with the school for use of the facility, at around $37,000/year. I don't know enough about the financial situation in Sarasota to know how reasonable that is, but the length of the lease alone makes me wonder -- 46 years is a long, long time in the dance world.

[Ed McPherson]

sounds like a steal of a deal to me. I wonder if its adjusted for inflation... In 20 years let alone 40 $37,000 is going to be change. Seems like change now considering what they are recieving.

[sandik]

I'm just doing math with the information from the news article, which may be way off, but yes, the length of the agreement and the price does seem to be unusual.