Famous artist may have to get back to her roots.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: Tar Heel Tattler

Where some see art, others see compost. For the second time in a year, Charlotte must deal with disposing of public art -- this time, nine giant holly bushes in a driveway. In the first episode, the local community college caused connoisseurs to howl when it blowtorched a sculpture into scrap.

The bushes are in a quarter-mile-long median at the Charlotte Coliseum, which the city is selling to help pay for a $270 million downtown arena. Likely buyer Crescent Resources, Duke Energy's real-estate development arm, will tear it down and uproot the bushes unless, by some odd chance, they fit into its plans for the site. There's the rub: The 1987 contract under which the city paid $340,000 to Maya Lin, designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, gives her the right to reclaim and move the sculpture -- her description -- if the city or new owners decide to ditch it.

"Contractually, we've got the prerogative to destroy the work if we choose," Assistant City Manager Curt Walton says. Duke spokesman Randy Wheless adds: "We wouldn't tear it down just to be tearing it down, but we or the city would have that right." Crescent has offered $24 million for the coliseum, which cost $48 million to build in 1987, and its 154 acres.

After Central Piedmont Community College chopped a birdlike sculpture roosting in the path of expansion last summer...