New search begins for Bass Park management

Swirling with controversy, Bass Park is back in the spotlight as the Bangor City Council begins a third go-around at seeking a suitor.

The council’s latest attempt to turn the city-owned complex over to private management, which involved negotiations with a group headed by Larry K. Mahaney, was snubbed by the voters during a non-binding vote in June and finally dumped by the council in a close vote.

By a 5-4 majority the council decided to stop talks with Mahaney’s group, Bass Park Associates, and restart the process by going out to bid. The majority hopes to discover if anyone out there is interested in the faded dame of lower Main Street.

The latest attempt at finding a match got underway Tuesday afternoon when the Bass Park Negotiations Advisory Committee, organized to assist the city’s negotiations with BPA, met and came up with several suggestions at how the city could proceed.

The request for proposals that resulted in the council’s decision to talk with BPA was overly general and vague, City Manager Edward A. Barrett said. “I’d like to make this RFP much more detailed and outline what we’d like to see in the contract.

“And I’d like to spend some time talking about the basis on which the contract will be awarded,” Barrett said. Some of the controversy surrounding the decision to go with BPA centered on the fact that the choice was based not on the strength of its proposal but that a majority of the council felt comfortable with the businesspeople in the group.

Most of the participants Tuesday agreed that starting over held the likelihood of winding up in one year at the same point. But they also said that politically there was little alternative.

Additionally, Thomas Needham, an attorney and former council chairman, said, “This appears to be more of a rehash rather than going back to ground zero. … Even though we’ve done things one way for a hundred years, doesn’t mean we’ll continue to do so.”

In summing up the afternoon’s discussion, council Chairman W. Tom Sawyer said that what the city sends out to potential applicants should be a request for proposals not a request for qualifications, and that it should favor a management contract over a lease.

“It’s clear to me that unless we change the status quo, we’re going to lose the market share that we have,” he said.

Any major decision is at least four months away. One reason that waiting a while made sense was that a consultant is doing a marketing study for the city. Barrett said that the study, which focuses on the waterfront, includes the Civic Center and Auditorium. The study should be complete in six weeks, he said, and will look at what can be done with those two parts of the complex.

Another reason was that given the politically charged atmosphere surrounding Bass Park, and the narrow margin of most council votes on the issue, Sawyer said it would make sense to delay any final decisions until after the council election in November.

“I would anticipate this process not being ready until after the election,” Barrett said. “There is the potential for change during the election. And I’d look at dealing with the issue right after the council election.”