BANGOR, Maine — City officials will hire a national design and engineering firm to help craft a plan for the future of Bangor’s waterfront concert venue — guiding changes to everything from flow of foot traffic to aesthetics and sound mitigation.
During a meeting Monday night, the Bangor City Council approved a $65,000 agreement with FTL Design Engineering Studio, a New York-based firm that specializes in designing performance venues and transportation hubs.
Among the outdoor music venues FTL has designed or improved are the Sun Valley Music Pavilion in Idaho, the Charlottesville nTelos Wireless Pavilion in Virginia, the Summerstage in New York’s Central Park and the Carlos Moseley Music Pavilion, a traveling amphitheater used by the Metropolitan Opera Company and New York Philharmonic.
“This is not going to give us a final, ‘this is what you need to build’ document,” Tanya Emery, director of community and economic development, said during a committee meeting last week. “This is a very laborious process and it’s going to involve a lot of moving parts and pieces.”
The end result of the study will be a “master planning document,” recommending changes not only to the Waterfront Concerts venue, but also the “forecourt” area between the concert venue and Railroad Street, the seldom-used earthmound amphitheater behind the Waterfront Concerts stage, as well as the area along the Penobscot River.
This study comes on the heels of a report released earlier this year from Massachusetts-based audio consultant Acentech offering recommendations to ease sound issues. Most ideas that centered around upgrading the venue were deemed prohibitively expensive — at least in the short term.
FTL’s agreement with the city states that it would take Acentech’s study into account as it makes recommendations, as will state and federal laws and regulations.
Since the Waterfront Concerts series started in the Queen City, some residents have complained about noise levels in surrounding neighborhoods. Most complaints stem from hard rock shows and other genres with heavy, driving bass.
Part of FTL’s goal is to identify ways the city might reduce the amount of noise escaping the venue while improving the looks and flow in the waterfront area as a whole.
FTL would team up with Harriman Architects and Engineers, which has offices in Auburn and Portland, and Jaffe Holden, a Connecticut-based acoustics consultant, to analyze the acoustics of Bangor’s venue and recommend architectural changes that might mitigate sound.
The $65,000 contract is more than the city initially planned for, according to Emery. City Councilor Pauline Civiello pointed out that the city had allocated only $50,000 toward the study during its budget process.
“What we wanted was a little more than we had budgeted for,” Emery said. She dipped into other areas of her department’s budget to find the remaining $15,000.
“The firm has also conceded a little bit on some of their pricing to bring it down to what we could get for $65,000,” she added. “We didn’t want to cut out things that we thought were important, we felt this report was a priority.”
The agreement includes an “optional additional service” that would have FTL review area topographic data and the arrangement of buildings in the area to build a computer model of how sound spreads from the pavillion to the surrounding community. The added cost would be $6,500.
Councilor Pauline Civiello raised concerns about taking on the cost of this study when the city has yet to act on recommendations that appeared in Acentech’s reports, which amounted to setting limits on decibel levels from the concert venue. The city has sent those adjusted figures to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection and is waiting for approval, according to Emery.
Even so Emery and other councilors argued that the Acentech recommendations only cover one aspect of the waterfront — the sound from the concerts series. It doesn’t address overall design and efficiency in and around the venue.
“In my mind, it’s worth it to get this done right to ensure we aren’t spending more money [on studies] in the long run,” Councilor Ben Sprague said.
Councilor Joe Baldacci said he hopes this study and the vision it offers helps drive public and private investment in the waterfront — something Waterfront Concerts promoter Alex Gray has said will need to happen if the series is going to continue to thrive and grow.
The FTL report is scheduled to be completed by May 2015.
Follow Nick McCrea on Twitter @nmccrea213.