BANGOR, Maine — With another outdoor Waterfront Concerts season in the books, the Bangor City Council soon will begin working to address the concerns of residents who say noise from the events hurts their quality of life while also safeguarding a vital economic engine for the city.
One of the tools the City Council will have available when it takes up the issue after the November elections is a report on sound levels from the concerts. Before the start of the fifth year of the concert series, the city hired Acentech, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based audio consultant, which set up three monitoring stations in the area — one inside the venue at the audio mix station in front of the stage, one on the roof of a Barker Street building, and another just across the river in Brewer outside the public library along North Main Street.
Those sound-level monitoring systems transmitted data wirelessly to Acentech’s computers for analysis before, during and after shows. The company released its findings in a report in late July.
The total cost of the study was about $25,000. Waterfront Concerts agreed to cover about $15,000 of that. The rest will come from the downtown tax increment finance fund.
Acentech’s study, which includes data collected at eight shows held from May through July, confirms much of what the city knew anecdotally. For example, May’s Rise Above Fest — an all-day hard rock music festival that prompted more than 120 noise complaints from residents in and around Bangor — was loud.
That show and the performance by country music superstar Brad Paisley were the only shows during the report period that exceeded sound level limits approved by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, according to Acentech.
Rise Above Fest prompted the most complaints from residents by far. Tim McGraw’s country show drew a little more than 40 complaints, even though it was “quieter” than Paisley’s performance. Still, those are the highest complaint totals for the season, in a city with a population of nearly 33,000. That’s not to say that everyone bothered by the sound called the city to complain about it.
Waterfront Concerts promoter Alex Gray said that some shows this season, including Dave Matthews Band and Willie Nelson, prompted complaints from concertgoers who said the music was difficult to hear inside the venue. It can be difficult to balance the desires of ticket holders who pay for the “rock show” experience against the desires of people spending a quiet night at home, Gray said.
Acentech said that a number of factors play into what residents hear in or near their homes, and how many complaints the city receives as a result. Those range from weather conditions and cloud cover to how much ambient noise the residents are used to or what their music preferences are.
What can the city do to resolve residents’ concerns?
The report essentially puts to rest the concept of building a sound barrier around the venue. In order to be effective, such a wall would need to be more than two stories tall in some spots, blocking waterfront views. The wall would be “prohibitively expensive” to build and “marginally effective” in mitigating the low-frequency sounds that are driving most of the complaints, according to Acentech.
A permanent roof structure over the stage and pit area could be a more effective means of containing the sound to the venue, allowing less to escape out into surrounding communities, according to the report. Gray has said that probably would be the ideal solution, but would come at a significant cost. Such a structure could block views to or from the river and “significantly alter the appearance and character of the waterfront area, and it could be very expensive to build,” Acentech said.
There are two more plausible options, according to Acentech. One would be to invest in “directive sound amplification technologies” that “aim” the sound at audiences, however, most performers already bring these sorts of systems on their tours. If Waterfront Concerts were to install its own sound system and mandate that all performers use that, rather than the tour’s own setup, some performers could decide to bypass Bangor, the report acknowledges.
Acentech’s final option is that the city set its own restrictions on sound levels. Again, Acentech acknowledges that setting such limits on performers could cause some tours to decide to stay away from a smaller market such as Bangor. That’s a concern Gray has repeatedly raised.
“That said, reasonable limits are the most effective, most reliable and least costly means of controlling levels to the community, and many venues operate successfully with targeted sound limits in place,” the report states.
Now that the city has data and mitigation recommendations from third-party sound experts, it will begin weighing its options on how to handle the sound level concerns in coming months.
City officials have made clear that they want the concerts to stay.
The concert series pumped $17.5 million into the local economy in 2013 alone, according to a peer-reviewed study from University of Maine economist Todd Gabe. In the three prior years, that economic impact was estimated at $30 million.
Gray said he’s continuing to try to court bigger and more popular acts each year, but that eventually he’ll reach a “ceiling” in terms of which acts are willing to come to a smaller market like Bangor.
Waterfront Concerts’ current agreement with the city extends through 2016. Any discussions about potential modifications to that agreement, including a new decibel limit, likely won’t begin before November elections bring one to three new councilors into the process, according to City Manager Cathy Conlow.
“We’ll continue to work with the city,” Gray said. “We want to be in Bangor, and we want to be good neighbors.”
Follow Nick McCrea on Twitter @nmccrea213.