PORTLAND, Maine — Three years after chart-topping folk rock band Mumford & Sons attracted 15,000 people to Portland for an outdoor concert on the Eastern Promenade, the city-owned park may once again play host to a concert.
Since Mumford & Sons brought their Gentlemen of the Road festival to Maine’s largest city in August 2012, concert promoters and city officials repeatedly suggested they would be open to converting the spacious Eastern Promenade to a concert venue again. But it took more than 26 months for another plan to transform the site to reach the City Council.
On Monday night, the council voted 7-0 to allow promoter Townsquare Media — also owner of a slate of city radio stations, including the alternative rock WCYY 94.3 FM and top 40 WJBQ 97.9 FM — to stage a show on the Eastern Prom in August of next year.
Councilors Jill Duson and John Coyne were absent for the vote.
Andrew Downs, Portland’s director of public assembly facilities, told acting City Manager Sheila Hill-Christian in a memorandum earlier this month Townsquare has yet to secure performers for the concert, but expects the show to attract between 6,000 and 7,000 fans.
City Councilor Ed Suslovic called the proposed show a “pretty exciting prospect” Monday night.
The concert would be held on a Saturday in August, weather permitting, which makes the potential event dates Aug. 1, 8, 15, 22 and 29. Bands would be performing from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m. in what would be effectively a daylong festival-style concert.
Townsquare Media is no stranger to live music promotion, boasting a portfolio of previous concerts nationwide with headliners including country artists Miranda Lambert and Faith Hill, as well as other popular contemporary performers like Michael Franti and the Lumineers.
Townsquare is also elbowing into a Portland concert market that in recent years has been dominated by The State Theatre management group, which organized the ballyhooed Mumford & Sons show and last month announced plans to establish a regular outdoor concert venue as part of the $100-million-plus redevelopment of the Thompson’s Point peninsula.
The Bangor-based Waterfront Concerts, which books the Queen City’s 16,000-capacity outdoor space overlooking the Penobscot River, has also made inroads into the Portland market in recent years, promoting a series of shows at the city-owned Maine State Pier with acts like singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette and rock band 3 Doors Down.
Despite the increased competition on Portland’s outdoor concert scene in recent years, the Townsquare show promises to be significant. If it reaches the ticket sales the promoter hopes, the 2015 Eastern Prom concert would be more than twice the size of any shows at either the Thompson’s Point site or Maine State Pier, each of which can hold about 3,000 people, and would be the biggest outdoor concert turnout since Mumford & Sons.
The city of Portland earned the equivalent of $54,000 from the Mumford & Sons show — a number that includes the $25,000 value of six solar-powered recycling containers the tour donated to the city — and that came on top of $63,000 in reimbursements from concert organizers for extra police and ambulance coverage, among other things.
Diane Davison, executive director of the group Friends of the Eastern Promenade, was among those to urge approval of the concert plan Monday night.
“The Mumford show was a huge success,” she said. “It benefited our city and it benefited our organization.”
According to Downs, Townsquare has similarly pledged to cover any costs incurred by the city for the concert, and the council’s Monday night vote included the stipulation that the city reserves the right to veto any act it doesn’t feel would be a good fit in the park, which is bordered closely by a residential neighborhood. He also said the city is negotiating a fee per ticket the city would be paid for the 2015 show as well.
Downs told the council on Monday night city officials learned from the relatively few complaints about the otherwise successful Mumford & Sons concert, and will work closely with concert promoters to ensure enough access to portable toilets and food vendors.
The event would involve the closure of several area roads and boat access near the city-owned East End Beach in the area of the concert, Downs told Hill-Christian.
High Street resident Steven Scharf said the closure of the boat access was among the aspects of the proposed concert that concern him, and remained skeptical the city would get a fair share of money from the event.
“To restrict that on any Saturday in August would be a significant detriment to what the city has to offer,” he said.
Councilor Jon Hinck said he’s uneasy not knowing who the musical performer will be, and worried a public debate about what act is appropriate for the neighborhood could be divisive. He also noted that The State Theatre and Mumford & Sons worked hard to use local food vendors and promote local businesses, and urged Downs to convince Townsquare to do so as well.
“I’m not sure it’s easy to replicate what went well for Mumford & Sons,” Hinck said. “Much of this seems to be on faith that the details will be handled at least as well or better than they were for Mumford & Sons.”
